144 
On the Sesamoids of the Knee- Joint 
«, and snkoon to the J and ^j, [liut written in the OK .iU^JLa.,] a Pers. word, [originally 
J aral)ioized ; (TA ;) "its action is nearly like that of the i^ja. [or "hellebore"]; and 
sometimes from half a drachm to a drachm is administered to him who is affected with palsy, 
and he is cured thereby, (K, TA,) speedily ; (TA ;) Init a drachm thereof is dangerous, (K, TA,) 
in a great degree." 
On the other hand the ribbed fruit of Coriandrum sativum, a sample of which 
we owe to the courtesy of the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, does not seem 
very suggestive of the sesamoid bones of the human digits*. We aTe thus thrown 
back on the following problems : 
(a) Galen distinguishes SesaDiuin from Sesamoides magnum, and directly tells us 
that the sesamoid bones are called from the seeds of the former. But the seeds of 
the latter if identical with Ricinus are far more like sesamoid bones-f. 
(6) It is conceivable that the sesamoid bones were given their name long before 
Galen's day, and that like his successors he simply repeated a tag with regard to 
them — a commonplace of the Greek anatomists. The name being Arabic (or even 
possibly Persian) it is conceivable that it was applied to the sesamoid bones before 
it reached the Greeks. 
Johannes Riolanus has a section De sesamoideis ossiculis% in which he refers to 
the sesamoids of hand and foot, but not to the fahellae. He especially notices the 
sesamoid bone of the great toe which he tells us the Magi called Albadaran, it was 
of the magnitude of a small pulse (cicer) ; it could not perish, and from it as from 
a seed the whole body would regenerate on the Day of Judgment. This tale also 
occurs in Cornelius Agrippa's Liber de occulta Philosophia, Cap. xx, with the 
Hebrews substituted for the Magi : 
Est in humano corpore os quoddam minimum, quod Hebraei Luz vocant magnitudine ciceris 
miindati, quod nulli corruptioni obnoxium, ne igne quidem vincitur, sed semper conserv^itur 
illaesum, ex quo veluti planta ex semine, in resurrectione mortuorum nostrum eorjjus animale 
repullulaliit§. 
* Memoiandum of Dr 0. Stapf in reply to a letter from K. Pearson with regard to Arabic use of 
SM SM for coriander (Royal Botanic Garden^, Kew, 10 May 1920) : 
I cannot find anything in our books containing Arabic plant names that would suggest that SM SM 
(semsem) was ever used iu Arabic for Coriandrum satii-um. The latter is Kuzbarab in the Arabic of 
Egypt, Syria and India. The Greeks knew it well and the Coder Vindobonensis (c. 500 a.d.) of Dioscorides 
contains a very good figure of it. It is practically certain that the Greeks took the word sesame from the 
Semitic peoples of Asia, but they would hardly have mistaken it for Coriandrum, which has seeds (or 
rather fruits) of a very different appearance and taste and yields practically no fat oil. Dioscorides deals 
rather fully witli its properties, but there is no direct allusion to a similarity with sesame, nor do his 
observations suggest it. Prof. Pearson may judge for himself whether there is any similarity between 
Coriandrum fruits and the sesamoid bones of man. 
t While Galen uses arjaafxis as equal to sesame there is some evidence that it was also used for 
ariffOLHoeihet /J-eya, see Liddell and Scott's Greeli-En(/Hsh Lexicon who quote Dioscorides, Noth. 4, 152. 
X Osteologia, Paris, 1614, p. 483. In this work Jacob Sylvius' commentary on Galen's De ossibus is 
given and on p. 477 we read: "In poUicibus et primis digitorum articulis & in simiarum poplite 
sesamoidea plura, paueiora extensionem immodicam, et que luxationem minaretur, prohibentia." 
Sylvius (1478-1555) antedates Vesalius (b. 1514) ; he clearly knew of the fabellae in apes, and may well 
have started Vesalius on the discovery of those in man. 
§ See also Hyrtl, Das Arabische luid Hebrdische in der Anatomie, S. 165 et seq. Further Joannis 
Munnics, De re anatomica, Treves, 1697, p. 213. 
