23 JA'Ti? OD UCTION. 



" The vague ambiguity of sucli terms as superior, inferior, anterior, posterior, etc., 

 must bave been felt and acknowledged by every person the least versant with anatomical 

 description." 



Some of Barclay's new terms have been occasionally used by Owen, but 

 most of his contemporaries and immediate successors seem to have been quite 

 indifferent to his suggestions, and only within a comparatively few years has 

 the subject again received attention. 



Dunglison admits (A, 61) that " Great confusion has prevailed with 

 anatomists in the use of the terms before, behind, etc." Spitzka forcibly 

 states [1, 75, note 1) the objections to the use of anterior, etc., and refers 

 (7, 165) to the gradual disuse of the equivalent German terms by Henle, 

 Gudden and others ; more exact terms, also, are occasionally employed by 

 several writers who do not explicitly condemn the current toponomy; Cones, 

 1, 150; Cleland, 1, 170; Gegenbaur, A, 491; EoUeston, B, 33, note; 

 Huxley, 2. 



In previous publications (A, 69, and 1, fere) Mivart more or less consist- 

 ently discards anterior and posterior, and his recent work (B, 358, note,) cha- 

 racterizes them as "Unfortunate as applied to a quadruped like the cat." 



Finally, the need of a radical "change of base" has been proclaimed in 

 one of the very strongholds of anthropotomy : — 



" Now that the more extended study of comparative anatomy and embryonic develop- 

 ment is largely applied to the elucidation of the human structure, it is very desirable that 

 descriptive terms should be sought which may, without ambiguity, indicate position and 

 relation in the organism at once in man and animals. Such terms as cephalic and caudal, 

 dorsal and ventral, etc., are of this kind, and ought, whenever this may be done con- 

 sistently with suflBcient clearness of description, to take the place of those which are only 

 applicable to the peculiar attitude of the human body." — Qimin, A, i, 6. 



This is certainly explicit as to the principle involved, and it is to be 

 hoped that later editions of this standard Human Anatomy may display its 

 practical application to the body of the work. 



The ambiguity here alluded to is not merely hypothetical. In a recent 

 work (Mivart, B) the M. sterno-mastoideus is described (p. 134) as arising 

 " beneath the anterior part of the pectoralis major,'' but on p. 145 a part of 

 the M. ectopedoralis is said to arise " beneath the manubrium [prsester- 

 num]." In the former case beneath means entad of or dorsad of, while in the 

 latter the same word signifies ectad of or ventrad of. The experienced 

 human or comparative anatomist may know what is intended, and the con- 

 text would enable any one, with a little study, to determine the matter by 

 exclusion ; but there are so many instances in which, by reason of the ab- 

 sence of planes and straight lines, the context must be depended upon in a 

 greater or less degree, that needless ambiguities should be avoided. 



The foregoing illustration, however, by no means exhausts the list of 

 poisible ambiguities. In the normal position of a vertebrate, the heart is 



