80 
Anatomy. — „Contribution to the knowledge of the development of 
the vertebral column of man”. By Prof. Dr. E. W. RosexperG. 
(Communicated at the meeting of March 30, 1912). 
The investigation, about which I wish to make a communication, 
was in the first place made by me with the intention, to test 
by new material my view regarding the existence of processes of 
transformation in the vertebral column of man, because this view, 
thongh it has been affirmed by several investigators, has been 
repeatedly contradicted, also of late years. 
Furthermore I wished to make my investigation owing to a plan, 
communicated by me a long time ago, to utilize the work in the 
preparation-room for a purely scientific purpose *). 
In view of both intentions it was necessary to obtain a knowledge 
as complete and exact as possible, of the differences in form and 
composition, that the vertebral column of fullgrown man can 
show, and moreover in such a way, that always the whole verte- 
bral column and not only a part of it is examined. Neither was it 
allowed to make a choice among the objects that were at disposal, 
whereby preference was given to rare or more interesting observa- 
tions; all the available vertebral columns, provided that they were 
complete, were to be used for the investigation. But on account of 
the anthropological side of the scientific work in the preparation- 
room, I had to put aside the vertebral columns of anonymous per- 
sons and of persons belonging to other nations than the Dutch. 
Consequently my investigation regards the vertebral columns of 
born Dutchmen. 
On account of the small number of corpses that were at my 
disposal at Utrecht, I was obliged to collect during a period of 
time, running from the autumn of 1888 to the end of 1899, in 
order to get 100 vertebral columns that satisfied the requirements. 
In the period from 1900 till the present day a second hundred © 
has not yet been obtained. 
In the treatment of the vertebral columns I have not followed 
the usual method of preparation by which maceration is applied, 
because small parts are easily lost when is followed this method and 
because in adjusting again the bones of a vertebral column, isolated 
by maceration, arbitrariness and inaccuracy cannot be avoided. 
1) E. Rosenrerc, Eine vergleichende Beurtheilung der verschiedenen Richtungen 
in der Anatomie des Menschen. Antrittsvorlesung, gehalten in Utrecht d. 28. 
Sept. 1888. Leipzig 1589, p. 43—47. 
E. Rosenserc, Ueber wissenschaftliche Verwerthung der Arbeit im Praeparirsaal. 
Morpholog. Jahrbuch, Bd. XXII, p. 561—589. 1895. 
