2 ANATOMICAL NOMENCLATURE 



What the "BNA" is. 



The expression BNA is a shorthand title for a list of some 4500 anatomical 

 terms (nomina anatomica) accepted at Basle in 1895 by * ne Anatomical Society 

 as the most suitable designations for the various parts of the human anatomy 

 which are visible to the naked eye. The terms are all in correct Latin and have 

 been selected by a group of the most distinguished anatomists in the world, 

 working six years at their task, as the shortest and simplest available names for 

 the different structures; the majority of the terms were already in use in the 

 various text-books, but some of them were selected from anatomical monographs 

 not considered in the text-books, and a few of them are brand-new, introduced 

 into the list, where an examination of the literature and of anatomical prep- 

 arations showed that none of the terms hitherto coined was satisfactory. 



One name only is given to each structure, and the mass of synonyms which 

 encumbered the text-books can thus be swept away. If one of the larger text- 

 books of gross anatomy be examined, as many as 10,000 terms will be found 

 employed, the half of which are synonyms ; and if the anatomical terms used in 

 the various standard text-books be collected into one list, the total number 

 amounts to more than 30,000. It is no small achievement to have reduced the 

 necessary number of terms in gross anatomy, as it is known to-day, to less than 

 5000, an achievement for which both students and teachers of the subject must 

 be thankful. 



Even more important is the exclusion from the list of all obscure or ambig- 

 uous terms, each name employed having a definite and easily ascertainable 

 meaning. The construction of the list has led, too, to the establishment of cer- 

 tain general principles regarding the formation and use of anatomical terms, 

 and these principles promise to be of great service in simplifying terminology 

 and keeping it uniform 1 as anatomical science continues to develop. 



Why this revision of anatomical terminology was undertaken. 



Previous to undertaking this revision of the names used in gross anatomy, 

 the burden of terms which had to be carried by text-book, teacher, and pupil 

 had been growing progressively heavier. Anatomical structures had been chris- 

 tened in a most haphazard way. From the beginning of the science each inves- 

 tigator gave names as he would to the parts he studied, and as one investigator 

 was often ignorant of the work done by others the same parts were frequently 

 differently dubbed. The authors of anatomical text-books, especially those who 

 read widely, gradually collected these terms, though each author selected and 

 jerected names from the lists used by his predecessors as he thought fit. 



It has thus come about that we have inherited from previous centuries an 

 excess of anatomical terms, many single structures carrying double or even mul- 

 tiple designations. Examples come at once to mind: The pneumogastric 

 nerve is also the vagus nerve as well as the tenth cerebral nerve; the trapezius 

 muscle is known to some as the musculus cucullaris ; the laryngeal prominence 

 is also Adam's apple; the aqueduct of the cerebrum is also, in many books, the iter 

 e tertio ad quartum ventriculum; m. levator palati is synonymous with m. petro- 

 salpingostaphylinus. These double and multiple terms were passed on from 

 lecture to lecture and from text-book to text-book, and as a result of this anarchy 

 in the creation and use of terms the weight became terribly grievous. 

 Teachers and pupils writhed under it. Anatomical research was, to some extent 

 at least, retarded by it. When the valvula coli was known also variously as 

 the valvula ileocecalis, the valvula Bauhini, the valvula Tulpii, and the valvula 

 Falloppii, a certain historical sense may have been aroused and opportunity 



