With Linnaeus, he has also been careful 

 to avoid implication concerning which form 

 is high and which low. Recognizing that 

 man has specific characteristics embraced 

 in the designation "human," he has chosen, 

 at the suggestion of Dr. Adolph Schultz, 

 to employ the phrase "primates other than 

 man" rather than to accept such current 

 terms as "subhuman," "infrahuman," or the 

 somewhat theological designations which 

 imply that man is the head and center of 

 the universe. 



A student of the nervous system, how- 

 ever, recognizes differences of organization 

 among the various primate forms, and in 

 discussing the origins of the nervous system 

 the term "encephalization" is frequently 

 employed. This implies that in evolutionary 

 history there has been a tendency for the 

 encephalon to take over functions con- 

 trolled in earlier times by other parts of 

 the nervous system. One of the highest 

 degrees of encephalization in the motor 

 sphere is encountered in the cortical repre- 

 sentation of the spider monkey's tail. As 

 far as we know, a spider monkey whose tail 

 representation has been removed is not 

 able again to move its tail voluntarily; 

 whereas man can walk on his paretic hind 

 limb within a few weeks after the leg area 

 has been entirely removed. Are we to say, 

 therefore, that the cerebral organization of 

 the spider monkey is superior to that of 

 man, and that in consequence the spider 

 monkey is higher? Obviously no such infer- 

 ence can be drawn, and Darwin himself was 

 the first to point out that specialization of 

 a given function can not be used as a 

 criterion of evolutionary position. 



However scrupulous the biologist must 

 be in avoiding the errors of anthropocentric- 

 ity, the medical scientist is not necessarily 

 under the same obHgation. His preoccupa- 

 tion with man, far from being considered 

 opprobrious, has often been extolled in med- 

 ical literature as a virtue. And it is my con- 



viction that the anthropocentricity among 

 those working in the basic medical sciences 

 is the most significant development in med- 

 ical education and research in this country. 

 Whether it be in the devising of a labora- 

 tory exercise, or in the citing of experimen- 

 tal evidence from the lecture platform, or 

 in the choice of a laboratory animal for pur- 

 poses of investigation, let it be said, 'Better 

 a cat than a frog, better a monkey than a 

 dog, better a man than a marmoset.' 



For more than a decade several of the 

 preclinical laboratories of this medical 

 school, and notably the Laboratories of Pri- 

 mate Biology under Professor Yerkes, have 

 devoted their attention to the investigation 

 of primates. Inevitably these animals come 

 to be something more than a 'laboratory 

 animal'; they are research material of spe- 

 cial quality. One's interest expands and one 

 begins to think of a biology of the primates. 

 For the past decade the Laboratory of 

 Physiology has accepted the proposition: 

 'If not man, then monkey.' We have at- 

 tempted to make some contribution to the 

 paraphernalia of primate biology as well 

 as to the body of fact in the form of devel- 

 oping a surgery suitable to delicate and ex- 

 pensive material, of attention to taxonomi- 

 cal terminology, to care and housing of the 

 primates, etc. To compile and analyze the 

 literature of the primates in the form of the 

 present bibliography seemed a logical step 

 in strengthening the structure of primate 

 biology, and a necessary step, since abstract 

 and bibliographical journals on the whole 

 recognize no distinction of this group of 

 animals. Having, as it were, collected the 

 literature of the primates on paper, we pro- 

 pose now to collect such hterature in fact. 

 We hope to build, as a special collection of 

 the Historical Section of the new Library, 

 a library of primate literature; a modest 

 nucleus has already been formed during 

 the past ten years. The propriety of incor- 

 porating a 'zoological collection' in a medi- 



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