124 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



V. 1895-96. Among the requirements of technical terms 

 enumerated in 1871 was " Independence of context for signifi- 

 cation." The rigid application of this would exclude all homo- 

 nyms and would require every term to be absolutely explicit. It 

 was perhaps not unnatural for a comparative beginner in the 

 subject to make such a rule, and, having made it, to adhere to 

 it somewhat persistently, as in the following cases. 



Of the three current appellations, conarium, epiphysis, and 

 corpus pineale, the last was rejected unhesitatingly as a poly- 

 onym, and the second as applying equally (without the qualifier 

 cerebri) to the separable end of a growing bone; as recently 

 acknowledged ('96), I long resisted the precept and example of 

 H. F. Osborn and E. C. Spitzka in favor of epiphysis as correla- 

 tive with hypophysis, and failed to recognize the full force of 

 Ball's remark, " The human mind wearies of too many names, 

 and much more readily assimilates a new meaning for an old 

 one." 



Likewise, although favoring the general plan of rendering 

 the Latin ae and oe by e in anglicized (paronymized) words, 1 I 

 retained the diphthong in coelia and its compounds (from 

 KOL\La, a cavity) for the sake of distinguishing them from the 

 derivatives of #77X77, a tumor. I now frankly acknowledge the 

 non-necessity of the diphthong even for the discrimination of 

 encephalocele, the normal cavity of the brain, from the same 

 word signifying an abnormal protrusion of the organ. 



In August, 1884, I proposed to replace the common poly- 

 onym, axis cerebro-spinalis , and even Owen's myelencephalon, 

 by the brief mononym, neuron, warranted by neuralis, neuren- 

 tericus, etc., and correlated with enteron (canalis alimentaria) and 

 axon (axis somatica). The term was used by Minot ('92), Stowell 

 ('85), Waters ('91), and others. Its abandonment by me in favor 

 of neuraxis ('89) was due to two later observations : (a) the prior 

 use of netiraxis 2 in the same sense ; (b) the prior application of 



1 In this country no medical writer has more persistently and vigorously urged 

 this simplification than the former editor of the Medical News, Gould, George M. 

 ('94, '96). 



2 In the Dictionnaire de Medecin of Robin and Littre occurs nevraxe, the 

 Galloparonym of a potential antecedent, neuraxis ; but neither the propounder 

 nor the first adopter is named. 



