Wilder, Neural Terms. 231 



English, 1800; French, 1800; Italian and Spanish, 900; Ger- 

 man, 2900. Assuming the number of parts or features to be 

 500-600, there were evidently many superfluous neuronyms, 

 especially in Latin and German. The excess in these two lan- 

 guages might be accounted for in part by the international 

 character of the former, and by the large number of publica- 

 tions in the latter. 



§59. But a careful scrutiny disclosed two other causes : 

 (i) Many of the Latin names, especially the older, comprised 

 so many words as to constitute descriptive phrases, and to fur- 

 nish opportunity for conscious or unconscious abridgement and 

 permutation (§ 37); each resultant combination had to be re- 

 garded as a name. In W. & G. , '89 §56, are enumerated no 

 less than twenty-three distinct Latin names for the fibrous 

 bundle connecting the cerebellum with the oblongata; they 

 average nearly 2.7 words each.^ 



§60. Of the German names a small proportion (58, or 

 two per cent, of the total) had any obvious resemblance to 

 equivalent Latin terms {Fissur to fissura, Commissiir to Coin- 

 missura, Centralcanal to Ccvialis centralis) ; the vast majority 

 were vernacular translations (e. g. , Br'ncke, Schenkel, Seepferd- 

 efiiss, SeJihugclpolstcr')? Different writers made different trans- 

 lations, and considerable variation occurred in different parts of 

 the same publication (§ 34). Hence there arose a multitude of 

 terms, acceptable and intelligible only to readers of the same 

 nationality, and bearing no relation to the original or interna- 

 tional Latin terms. In a greater or less degree the same might 

 be said of the other modern languages. 



§61. It will be seen that two opposing influences were 

 operating. Each anatomist preferred to employ terms belong- 

 ing to his own language ; at the same time he preferred that 

 other anatomists should employ Latin terms with which he was 



^ All these might be replaced by the single v/oxA, postpedunctilus. 



^ Without imputing even so worthy a motive as national self-satisfaction, 

 the effect was as if certain neurologists had yielded to a desire to confer upon 

 the printed page an obtrusively German aspect. 



