568 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 225. 



II. That any action of the Association ivith 

 respect to the use of terms has binding force. — 

 From certain expressions it might be in- 

 ferred that the adoption of a report on 

 nomenclature was tantamount to the enact- 

 ment of rules or by-laws, conformity to 

 which constitutes an indispensable condi- 

 tion of the maintenance of membership. 

 On the contrary, the recommendation and 

 acceptance of certain terms merely entitles 

 them to particularly respectful considera- 

 tion and throws upon those who prefer 

 others the burden of proof that those others 

 are superior. As an illustration of the im- 

 punitj' with which somewhat stringent in- 

 junctions may be disregarded may be men- 

 tioned the following : In the Anatomischer 

 Ameiger (March 3, 1897, pp. 323-329), in a 

 paper by Dr. Edward Flatau, •' Beitrag zur 

 technischen Bearbeitung des Centralner- 

 vensystems,' prepared in the Anatomic In- 

 stitute at Berlin, the Director of which is 

 Professor Waldeyer, a member of the B. N". 

 A. Commission and of the Gesellschaft that 

 recommended Dura mater encephali and Pia 

 mater encephali, the mononyms dura and pia 

 occur two and four times respectively, and 

 the authorized polyonyms are conspicuous 

 by their absence. 



III. That action of the majority of a commit- 

 tee should be delayed indefinitely by the absence 

 or unpreparedness of the minority after due 

 notice is given. 



IV. That the condemnatory phrases of the 

 ' Minority Report ' can, in any considerable de- 

 gree, be justly applied to the actual contents of 

 the ' Majority Report. ' 



, V. That the non- adoption of a term, whether 

 from the German list or my oivn, constitutes a 

 declaration against it. — It signifies merely a 

 suspension of judgment and a postponement 

 of action. 



VI. TJiat differences of usage or recommenda- 

 tion between American and foreign anatomists or 

 organizations should be removed in all cases by 

 the abandonment of our position. 



VII. Tliat the efforts of this Association for 

 the simplification of nomenclature shoidd be par- 

 alyzed by the disapprobation of foreign anato- 

 mists whose unfamiliar ity ivith what is done in 

 America is to be explained only by an indiffer- 

 ence thereto. — Among numerous instances of 

 this indiflference I select one with which my 

 own connection is so remote as to eliminate 

 the element of personal irritation. At the 

 meeting of this Association in December, 

 1895, there was presented an elaborate ' Re- 

 port on the Collection and Preservation of 

 Anatomical Material.' It was pfinted in 

 our Proceedings (15-38) and in Science, III., 

 January 17, 1896 ; was mentioned in several 

 journals and listed in the ' Ldteratur ' in 

 the Anatomischer Anzeiger. Yet in Septem- 

 ber, 1898, practically an entire number of 

 that periodical, twenty-five pages, was oc- 

 cupied by an article on that subject pur- 

 porting to tabulate and discuss the methods 

 employed in all parts of the world. The 

 whole United States is credited with an 

 article by Mall (Anzeiger, 1896, 769-775) 

 and (in a footnote) a ' Note ' by Keiller 

 in the Texas Medical Journal, 1891-2, VI-I., p. 

 425. 



VIII. That terms consisting of a single tvord 

 each constitute even the majority of the names 

 preferred by me or adopted by this Association a 

 year ago. — Whatever their abstract prefer- ' 

 ences, the members of the Committee realize 

 the impossibility of framing such a nomen- 

 clature. Two years ago ('Neural Terms,' 



§ 153 et seq.) I showed by statistics the 

 baselessness of the misapprehension and 

 characterized it as a 'terminologic phantasm 

 erected by the Germans between themselves 

 and the American Committees. ' 



More recently, however, the same notion 

 has reappeared in several reviews of a text- 

 book of nervous diseases, commonly' with 

 approval, expressed or implied, of the sup- 

 posed condition. The impression was prob- 

 ably gained from the fact that the author of 

 the bookj like myself, prefers single-word 



