8 ANATOMICAL NOMENCLATURE 



It is surprising to find how few really new terms were coined by the Com- 

 mission. Indeed, the first plan was so conservative that it expected to make no 

 new terms at all but only to choose the most suitable terms then in use in the 

 text-books. Fortunately this plan was not adhered to. The only terms avail- 

 able in the text-books for some structures were antiquated and unworthy of re- 

 tention; but, worse and oftener, among the terms used in the text-books are 

 some that are employed by one author in one sense and by another in another, 

 owing, in certain cases at least, to obscure or inexact views. The Commission 

 was therefore sometimes compelled to search the bibliography, to study dis- 

 sections, and even to make original investigations in connection with a given 

 term. For the sake of clarity and accuracy a certain number of new terms 

 had to be introduced, and in the explanatory notes which accompanied the 

 publication of the BNA Professor His has indicated the exact meaning of these 

 new terms. Now that the new anatomical text-books and atlases are being 

 written in the language of the BNA the student and physician will have no 

 difficulty in understanding the few terms which otherwise might have seemed 

 unfamiliar to him. The fact, however, remains that the list consists chiefly of 

 carefully selected old names; it gives quite a wrong impression, therefore, to 

 speak of the BNA as the "new terminology" or "new nomenclature."* 



The adoption of the BNA in America and in Great Britain. 



Having reviewed the history of the origin and construction of the BNA 

 let us now turn for a moment to the matter of its adoption in this and 

 in other English-speaking countries. It was thought by some, at first, that 

 there would be great difficulties in the way. 



(1) Thus, though granting the desirability of an anatomical terminology 

 which shall be the same in all civilized countries, some think that the time is not 

 yet ripe for it; the needs of the anatomists of different countries as regards 

 anatomical terms are, they argue, not yet fully identical. When it is remembered, 

 however, that the terms of the BNA deal only with well-established gross anatom- 

 ical structures and do not relate to microscopic parts or to parts concerning 

 which views are still unsettled, it is not difficult to conceive of international 

 cooperation in the use of them for the sake of uniformity. The work of all 

 anatomists, physiologists, biologists, pathologists and clinicians would be 

 made much easier thereby. The speed of progress in these days has compelled 

 every scientific medical man to read articles on his subject appearing in several 

 languages; unless he does so he falls hopelessly behind his colleagues. Even 

 medical students, in the schools with the higher requirements, are now asked to 

 read one or two modern languages other than their own before admission. 

 How obviously the reading of medical articles in the international bibliography 

 would be facilitated if all writers would make it a point to use the same ana- 

 tomical terms in texts and at the sides of illustrative plates and figures! 

 Certainly the vast majority of the terms of the BNA would be understandable 

 of all and agreeable to all. Even if a small residue of names might be found 

 objectionable and remain unused in each country, it would matter but little, 

 though most of us, surely, would be willing temporarily, for the sake of uni- 

 formity, to use a few terms not wholly to our liking. 



(2) There are, it is said, a few anatomists in America and in England 

 who are prejudiced against the BNA because it was prepared by the German 

 Anatomical Society and is largely the result of the work of German anatomists. 



* Through an oversight in proof-reading, I have myself fallen into this error in my 

 ''Laboratory Manual." 



