Karl Pearson and Adelaide G. Davin 145 
Thus the seedlike character of the sesamoid bone is preserved in both the 
Arabian Alhadaran and the Hebrew Luz with their mythical associations*. It 
would be of great interest to know the age of these myths. If the Semites before 
our epoch had discovered the sesamoid bones and attached these legends to them, 
there might be no weight at all in Galen's explanation of sesamoid as like to the 
sesame-seed — the whole idea and terminology may be Semite and not Greek, and 
Galen may have become acquainted with it in Asia Minor. 
(3) History of the Sesamoids of the Knee-Joint. First Period — that of isolated 
Records of Anatomical Writers. 
From the Greeks down through the Middle Ages the study of anatomy was 
essentially the study of human anatomy ; references to dogs or apes are few and far 
between and then very superficial in their associations f. Probably Jacob Sylvius' 
reference to the fabellae in apes is the first note we have of the existence of 
sesamoids of the knee-joint (see our footnote I, p. 144). There is no evidence that the 
Greeks or Arabs were acquainted \\-ith them. Vesalius was the first to draw 
attention to their existence in man. In his Be corporis hurnani fabrica. Lib. i, 
Cap. xxviii (Basel edition, 1555, p. 153, Leyden edition, 1725, Tom. I, p. 107) he 
writes : 
Deinde bina recensebit in poplite oceurreiitia os.siciila, quae duorum priinorum pedeui moven- 
tium musculorum imiascuntur capitibus, mox in illonun ex femori.s ossc pi incipio. Ossicula enim 
haec laevi sua at lubrica superficie, qua extra musculorum substantiam prominent, elatiorum 
speetant sedem ijosterioris regionis inferiorum femoris capitum, quorum impetum ilia solvunt & 
sustinent, hoc pri\'atim sibi vindicantia, quod musculorum exortibus, non vero aliorum fere om- 
iiiimi ossiculorum sesamo coniparatorum modo tendinibtis innectantui'. 
It is curious that in this passage Vesalius speaks as though the fabellae were 
constant in man, and this although as we shall see the mesial fabella is very rare 
indeed, and the Idteral fabella, does not exist in more than seven to ten per cent, of 
* The word Luz signifies a tree producing a small nut or the nut itself. In Genesis xxx. 37 it occurs 
and is rendered in the English version by "almond." Eashi, prince of commentators, explains it as 
chestnut, but it has been interpreted of any tree bearing small nuts, or almonds. Its secondary meaning 
in Rabbinic literature is a bone or cartilage resembling the almond said to be in the vertebral column 
of man. It was quite possibly the word used by Jewish anatomists for the sesamoids. 
Commenting on the words "And the almond tree shall blossom" we read in the Midrash (Ecclesiastes 
xii. 5: see also Genesis, Ealba g 28, and Leviticus, Kalba § 18) the following : 
R. Levi says. This is the " Luz " (i.e. almond-shaped bone) of the spinal column. Hadrian once 
asked R. .Joshua b. Hananiah from which part of the body of man shall he blossom forth in the life of 
the future? And he answered " From the ' Luz ' of the spinal column." He then said: How so? They 
then brought such a "Luz," put it in water, and it did not dissolve finally; into fire, and it was not 
burnt; into the mill, and it was not ground; they put it on a block and beat upon it with a hammer, 
and the block was split and the hammer broke, and all was of no avail [to destroy it]. 
The Midrash Ralbo is a very old collection of Hebrew lore, parts of which are probably antecedent 
to the Talmud recension. We have to thank our colleague Dr Hermann Gollancz for the above references. 
We think it probable, liowever, that Jewish anatomy was non-existent before the appearance of the Greek 
followed by the .\rabian medical schools. 
t The first Shniae Oateologia is due to the elder Riolanus and edited by the younger in the Ostrologia, 
Paris, 1614. Caput xxvi is entitled: De semmoideis and we read (p. 535), "Duo ossicula magnitudine 
ciceris supra utrumijue tuberculum femoris in origine gemellonnn reperiuntur." 
