ARCH^OLOGIA ANATOMICA. 



VII. 



The Parotid. 



The word ' parotid ' was used by the classic medical writers long 

 before the structure to which that name is now applied was 

 recognised as a special organ. The name was used to designate 

 this organ for many years before its true nature as a salivary 

 gland had been discovered. 



That glandular tissue existed in the neck was known to 

 Hippocrates, who, in contending for the view that glands and 

 hair always coexist, specified that glands exist below each ear 

 as well as around the jugular veins of the neck. He gives nO' 

 indication whatever that he regarded any of these as salivary 

 in function, nor indeed is there any sign that in the pre- 

 renascence period any observer sought for a source of the 

 saliva other than the oral mucosa. There is no ground what- 

 ever for the conjecture that the two vessels carrying ncsut 

 mentioned in Papyrus Ebers, f. xcix, are salivary ducts ; the 

 reference is to nasal mucus, not to saliva. In the pseudo- 

 Galenical treatise de Anatonie Vivorum, the origin of the saliva 

 from the hollows at the roots of the tongue is particularly 

 pointed out. 



In the first book of the Prorrhetika, Hippocrates makes 

 frequent reference to inflammatory swellings in the vicinity 

 of the ears, which he describes as occurring in certain febrile 

 and cachectic conditions. In indicating the topography of 

 these, he says they lie beside the ears (thus (1) oupa toiui 

 irap wra tuxv (2) apa tovtokti kul tu irapa tu mtu (3) 

 irpoKapcoOevra Trap oy?, etc.). Before the days of Pliny these 

 merely descriptive Hippocratic phrases had crystallised into a 

 proper name — the name of a disease. In several passages, as 

 for example xx. 1, 15, 21; xxviii. 7-11; xxxv. 17, Pliny gives 



