AECH^OLOGIA ANATOMICA. 



VIII. ' 



Teochanter. 



A COEEESPONDENT, Dr Jamiesoii of tlie Anatomical Department, 

 Edinburgh, has directed my attention to the use of this word as 

 the name of the famiUar femoral processes. I had noted, before 

 receiving his letter, that our standard lexicon, Liddell and 

 Scott, has a rather remarkable note on this word (p. 1584), 

 TpoxuvT'>]p, "pro2)erl'i/ a runner; the Ixdl on wMeli the hipbone 

 turns in its socl'ct, Galen; ef. Epigr. ap. Sext. Emp. M. i. 316 sq., 

 Poll. ii. 187. II. part of the stern of a ship, Hesych. III. an 

 instrument of torture, Joseph. Mace, 8." 



This definition is remarkable, for if anything is clearer than 

 another in Galen's description, it is that the trochanter and the 

 " ball on which the hipbone turns " are not the same thing. The 

 word occurs twice in Galen. In Be Ossibus, cap. 21, he says, 

 (XTTO^vcrei^ Se e^ef Svo juiKpa^ f tto/cuto) tou uv^^evo^, a? Tpo\avT>ipuii 

 ovofid^ova-L (Kuhn, ii. 773). 



Again, in the De Achninist. Anat. he speaks again of the 

 €K(pvcri<i beside the head of the thighbone, which is called tro- 

 chanter. The head of the bone he specifically describes as the 

 K€(paX}], the same name by which Hippocrates distinguishes 

 this part. (The trochanter is neither named nor described by 

 Hippocrates.) 



On what authority the lexicographers made the statement 

 quoted is not clear. The older and more accurate authority, 

 Stephanus, gives the proper meaning for the word, adding " pu- 

 tantur autem a rpoxf^^eiv esse dictae quod omnis motus cursusque 

 per musculos his apophysibus insertis perficiantur." Julius 

 Pollux likewise, in his Onomasiikon, gives the Galenical definition 

 Trjv irep'i rt] Ke(fjaXi] rod fxrjpov toov o<tt(Joi' eKcfiva-iv. Hesychius 

 (1524) says that is the bony knob external to the head of the 



