148 
On the Sesamoids of the Knee-Joint 
How these mediaeval anatomists used each others' very words ! There is, how- 
ever, the qualifying phrase soon to become a part of the myth, that the fabellae 
occur in the aged. Further the deer and the hare are added to the list, man, ape 
and dog, that own fabellae. This reference to the aged is emphasised again in the 
edition printed at Leyden, 1686, p. 756. 
Diemerbroeck, Anatome corporis hiiniani, Utrecht, 1672, p. 944, is content to 
return to the complete Vesaliiis legend, and finds i^o fabellae and these always occur- 
ring. Stephen Blancard's Anatomia reforinata, Leyden, 1695, p. 729, and Gerhardus 
Blasius' Anatome hominis, Amsterdam, 1673, p. 62, give also the complete Vesalian 
story. But the 17th century is not to close without one or two cases of men who 
report what they have actually seen. Thus Schrader in 1674 reports that he had 
found a fahella in the anatomy of a cadaver virile * and that sturdy old surgeon- 
anatomist William Cowper, in his Myotoiuia, reforinata, London, 1694, p. 206, states 
first the opinion of Vesalius and Riolanus : 
that in the two beginnings of this muscle there are two Ossiada Semmoidea, which we must 
acknowledge with Marchetti have hitherto escaped our Observation though it is likely it may be 
so in Aged Bodies, as it appeared in a subject I lately dissected on one side only. 
We might almost say that from the reported discovery of Vesalius, only 
Eustachius, Schrader and Cowper had really seen a fahella up to the end of the 
16th century. 
Even in the case of Cowper we are to find later that the dogmas as to the 
appearance of fabellae in the aged, and as to their object, are accepted. Thus in 
his The A natomy of Human Bodies, 2nd edition, Leyden, 1737, T. 103, F. 2, under 
Ossa sesamoidea, we read : 
111 some Bodies especially Aged, we find Two Ossa Sesamoidea on the Superior Parts of the 
Two Lower Heads of the Thighbone D, E : The Office of which is to Defend the Bending Tendons 
of the Tibia from too great a Collision on those Heads of the Bone which they would else be 
subject to. 
At the very end of the century Joannis Munnics, in his De re anatomica, Treves, 
1697, p. 213, sums up the pure Vesalian doctrine: 
In censu quoque ossiculorum sesamoiduni poni debent duo, quae in poplite inferioribus fenioris 
appendicibus apponuntur, duorum priorum pedem moventium musculorum principiis inhaerent. 
For him all sesamoids also start as cartilaginous and become solid with the progress 
of age. 
Thus far the history of the fabellae has been fully representative of an oft- 
occurring scientific tragedy. Authority dominates inquiry and dogma fills up the 
space with its story of how a non-existing phenomenon (the constant appearance of 
both fabellae in man) arises and what purpose it serves. The time was therefore 
ripe for a little comedy, and very early in the 18th century we find this in a double 
fashion, the Trew-Heister incident. In 1715 C. J. Trew wrote an Altorf Dissertation 
entitled De chylosi foetus hi utero. Tabella ll contains a large but crude drawing 
of a lateral fahella resting in a cavity on the condyle. There is a separate drawing 
* Obscrvatioiies anatomico-medicae, Amsterdam, 1674, p. 193. 
