Wilder, Neural Tenns. 279 



posterior and anterior, s2iperior and inferior, and their deriva- 

 tives, compounds, and abbreviations, should have significations 

 zootomic rather than anthropotomic. 



F. There now prevail and are likely to persist two con- 

 ditions not merely unknown to the Paires anatomici, but prob- 

 ably not imagined by them : {a) the enormous increase of ana- 

 tomic and physiologic knowledge ; {b) its general diffusion 

 among the people/ These two conditions^ militate against the 

 rigid maintenance of grammatic rules that might prevent the 

 establishment of new and shorter channels, or the fabrication of 

 new and briefer technical terms, the "tools of thought. " 

 Terms like vena cava posterior are obtrusively Latin, and hence 

 not acceptable to the laity; too much time and space are lost in 

 speaking and writing them, and time and space are daily becom- 

 ing more precious. 



§191. Consciously or unconsciously, for many years Eng- 

 lish and American anatomists have been gradually simplifying 

 their terminology in substantial accordance with the foregoing 

 propositions. In Germany the signs of such improvements are 

 as yet comparatively few. 



§192. Even if, however, the German committee were 

 reconciled to the employment of certain prepositions in compo- 

 sition with the force of adjectives, there would still remain ^ 

 special objection to/^.f/as indicating toward the tail rather than 

 toward the back. This objection is radical, and the conflict in- 

 volved is irrepressible; §§131-133- 



^193. Postramiis. — To this, as a mononymic substitute 

 for Ramus posterior arboris vitae cerebelli, Prof His offers no 



1 In fulfilment of the declaration of the elder Agassiz, " Science must cease 

 to be the property of the few ; it must be woven into the common life of the 

 world." 



* There is really a third condition, equally novel, but bearing less directly 

 upon the present question, viz., the pursuit of anatomy by women. Whatever 

 view may be taken of this in other respects, all decent men must rejoice that it 

 has hastened the elimination of the needless Nomina itnpudica which formerly 

 defiled even the description of the brain. For further commentary upon this 

 matter see W. & G., '82, 27. 



* Excepting with the chairman, §133. 



