122 



SCIENCE. 



A PARTIAL REVISION OF ANATOMICAL NO- 

 MENCLATURE, WITH ESPECIAL REFER- 

 ENCE TO THAT OF THE BRAIN * 



By Burt G. Wilder, M. D., Professor of Comparative Anat- 

 omy, etc., in Cornell University, and of Physiology in the Medi- 

 cal School of Maine. 



I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

 During the preparation of a paper "On the Gross 

 Anatomy of the Brain of the Domestic Cat {Felis domes- 

 tied)," I have been led to believe that some advantage 

 may be gained by certain modifications of the current 

 anatomical nomenclature. The present article contains 

 suggestions, chiefly of a practical nature, which I wish to 

 submit to other anatomists in the hope that, even if the 

 changes here indicated do not meet their approval, they 

 will be induced to take the general subject into consider- 

 ation. 



That the nomenclature of a science is worthy of atten- 

 tion is indicated by the care bestowed upon the language 

 of modern chemistry and mathematics, and by the lol- 

 lowing expressions of opinion : 



" Everything in science ought to be real, ingenuous and 

 open; every expression that indicates duplicity, or equiv- 

 ocation, reservation, wavering or inconsistency, is a re- 

 proach to it." — Barclay, A., 89 f 



" Questions of definition are of the very highest im- 

 portance in philosophy, and they need to be watched ac- 

 cordingly." Duke of Argyll, 1. 



" In all sciences, nomenclature is an object of import- 

 ance ; and each term should convey to the student a 

 definite meaning." Dunglison, A, Preface. 



"There is a necessity for perfect definiteness of lan- 

 guage in all truly scientific work." P. G. Tait, 1. • 



" Technical terms are the tools of thought." \ 



" Only an inferior hand persists in toiling with a clumsy 

 instrument, when a better one lies within his reach. 



..... A single substantive term is a better in- 

 strument of thought than a paraphrase." Owen, A, 1, 

 Preface, pp. xii, xiv. 



" As morphology deals with forms and relations of posi- 

 tion, it demands a careful selection of terms and a me- 

 thodical nomenclature." Goodsir, A, 11, 83. 



These remarks apply to the general subject of anatomi- 

 cal nomenclature. But the terms employed by anatomists 

 form two divisions : those which indicate the position or 

 direction of organs, and those by which the organs them- 

 selves are designated. Since, also, writers have usually 

 treated of them separately, it will be convenient here to 

 consider anatomical toponomy and organonomy under dis- 

 tinct headings. 

 TERMS OF POSITION AND DIRECTION — TOPONOMY. 



Dr. Barclay's volume had especial reference to this divi- 

 sion of the subject, and its key-note is struck in the follow- 

 ing paragraph (A, 5) : 



* This article is based upon two communications : the one, " A Partial 

 Revision of the Nomenclature of the Brain," was read at the Boston 

 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 August 28, 1880, and was reported, in part, in the Boston Daily Adver- 

 tiser, of August 30, and in the New York Medical Record for September 

 18th, 1880 ; the other, " On some Points of Anatomical Nomenclature," 

 was read at a meeting of the Cornell Philosophical Society, Ithaca, N. Y., 

 January 15, 1881. 



t In the List of Works and Papers at the end of this article, the names of 

 the authors are placed in alphabetical order. The titles of separate 

 works are designated by letters, and their order has no significance. The 

 titles of papers are numbered. In the case of papers published between 

 1800 and 1873 the numbers correspond to those in the chronological 

 "Catalogue of Scientific Papers published by the Royal Society of 

 London. In other cases the numbers are only provisional, and are 

 printed in italics. 



The references are made as follows: the name of the author is given 

 first, unless the author has been indicate! already ; then follows the letter 

 or the number by which the title of the work or paper is des gnated upon 

 the list ; if a Roman numeral is given it denotes the number of the volume ; 

 and the last number is that of the page. This system of references was 

 followed by me first in 1872, in ihe paper entitled Intermcmbr.il Homolo- 

 gies (10), and has been since adopted by others. 



X I have mislaid the reference to the source of this aphorism. Perhaps 

 some of my readers can supply it. 



"The vague ambiguity of such terms as superior, infe- 

 rior, anterior, posterior, &c, must have been felt and ac- 

 knowledged by every person the least versant with ana- 

 tomical description." 



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

 prevailed with anatomists in the use of the terms before, 

 behind, &c." Dr. Spitzka has forcibly stated (i, 75, note 

 the objections to the use of anterior, &c, and their un- 

 suitability is tacitly conceded in the employment of other 

 terms by several writers who do not explicitly condemn 

 the current toponomy: Gegenbaur (A, 491), Mivart (A, 

 69), Cleland (1, 170), Rolleston (B, 33, note), &c. 



Finally, the need of a radical change of base has been 

 proclaimed in one of the very strongholds of anthro- 

 potomy : 



" Now that the more extended study of comparative 

 anatomy and embryonic development is largely applied to 

 the elucidation of the human structure, it is very desirable 

 that descriptive terms should be sought which may, with- 

 out ambiguity, indicate position and relation in the organ- 

 ism at once in man and animals. Such terms as cephalic 

 and caudal, dorsal and ventral, &c, are of this kind, and 

 ought, whenever this may be done consistently with suffi- 

 cient clearness of description, to take the place of those 

 which are only applicable to the peculiar attitude of the 

 human body." — Quain, 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. 



How slender is the justification for retaining a toponom- 

 ical vocabulary based upon the relations of organisms to 

 the surface of the earth, appears more fully when we reflect 

 that the assumed standard, for the higher vertebrates at 

 least, is man in his natural erect attitude ; yet that both 

 man and animals are more often examined and compared 

 when lying upon the back, this being an attitude truly 

 characteristic of only that infrequent " subject," the sloth. 



As a single illustration of the logical inconsistencies into 

 which we are led by the use of the current toponomy, let 

 us take the series of possible designations of the direction 

 of some vertebral spinous process which projects toward 

 the skin of the back at, or approximately at, a right angle 

 with the myelon. With man the direction in which it 

 points is posterior, but with a cat it is superior, while 

 with an ape or a bird it is somewhere between the two ; 

 with all four, when on the dissecting table, it would be 

 usually inferior. Finally, with a flounder the correspond- 

 ing direction would be horizontal or sidewise. 



In short, to designate the locations of organs by the 

 relation of animals to the surface of the earth, which rela- 

 tion differs in nearly allied forms, and varies with the same 

 individual according to circumstances, is as far from phil- 

 osophical as it would be to define the place of a house or 

 a tree by reference to the planet Jupiter, or to assume that 

 mankind naturally face the rising sun, and hence to desig- 

 nate our right and left as the south and north sides of the 

 body. 



Some practical points respecting this division of the sub- 

 ject will be presented farther on. 



DESIGNATION OF ORGANS, — ORGANONOMY. 



There are probably few investigators or teachers of 

 comparative anatomy who have not been impressed, in 

 some degree, with the desirability of some modification of 

 the prevailing nomenclature of organs,— the " bizarre 

 nomenclature of anthropotomy," (Owen, A, II, 143) — 

 based as it is upon the peculiar features of the human 

 body, which has been fitly characterized, from a morpho- 

 logical point of view, as " not a model, but a mon- 

 strosity. ' 



This impression may give rise to special papers, like 

 those of Owen, (166), Maclise (1), and Pye-Smith (1, 16), 

 or simply to more or less extended remarks upon the sub- 

 ject, with or without the use or presentation of new 

 terms. 



