358 GENERAL ANATOMY. 



animals, and one with a single canal in the crustaceous. Ac- 

 cording to this last idea, if I understand it well, an insect or 

 a crustaceous animal could be correctly compared to a mon- 

 strous vertebrate animal deprived of brain and spinal marrow. 

 568. Be this as it may, however, with respect to this dif- 

 ference of opinion, altogether foreign to the anatomy of man, 

 there are three things to be considered in the osseous system; 

 the bones themselves, their articulations, and the skeleton 

 which results from their union. 



SECTION I. 



OP THE BONES. 



569. The Bones, Ossa, Ocr^a, are the hardest parts of the 

 human body, those which by their union form the skeleton. 



570. Each of the bones, and many parts of bones, have 

 received particular names. These names ought to be so much 

 the more precise and appropriate, that the names of many 

 other parts of the body are formed from them. 



The name of several bones is an adjective taken substan- 

 tively with a common termination: for example, the frontal, 

 occipital, parietal, &c.* M. Dumerilt has proposed, as a means 

 of giving precision and accuracy to the language of anatomy, 

 to give the same termination to all the names of bones, and to 

 them only. 



571. The number of the bones is very great, but different- 

 ly determined, according as we take the subject at a particular 

 age, or different subjects at different ages; and this is what has 

 most commonly been done. If, for example, it be wished to 

 determine the number strictly, taking the adult subject, the 

 sphenoid bone then occurs united to the occipital, and often to 

 the ethmoid; but the sternum is still divided into three parts, 



* This mode of expression is correct in French, but it is incorrect in Eng- 

 lish, and we are obliged to say, the frontal bone, the occipital bone, See. 



TRANS. 



f Prqfet (Tune nomenclature anatomique, Magasin Encyclopedique, t. ii. 

 Paris, 1795. 



