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Descriptions and Types 
127 
tion in case the latter is present. If the description is 
everything and objection is made to the type because it is 
a supplement to the description and therefore erroneous 
conclusions may be drawn from it, then a published figure 
is in the same class as the type. It is a supplement to 
the description and conclusions drawn from it may be 
contradictory to the description. If the principle “the 
description is everything,” were rigidly construed, type 
specimens, published figures, museum specimens, or any 
description subsequent to the original one could not be used 
in the preparation of a monograph. How far would tax- 
onomy progress if such a principle were adhered to? We 
would then have a mass of innumerable dogmas (descrip- 
tions) of which every word must be literally believed as 
true, and which would be looked upon as the final and only 
source of information regarding natural science. Such a 
condition actually existed in science for hundreds of years. 
From 200 A. D. to 1543 A. D. the written words of Galen 
describing the anatomy of the human body were looked 
upon as the final and only authority in this field. Galen’s 
descriptions were everything. If discrepancies were found 
between Galen’s descriptions and a dissected human cada- 
ver, the descriptions were right, the cadaver wrong. Dur- 
ing the period that this type of thought prevailed the spirit 
of scientific research was absent in all fields of knowledge, 
and anatomy as a science was stagnant. It was only when 
Vesalius overthrew authority and resorted to the dissection 
of the human body itself that anatomy began to progress 
as a science. Since Vesalius’ time descriptions have been 
a necessary and useful method of recording scientific knowl- 
edge, but they have not been the final and only authority 
in anatomy or in any of the other sciences. In taxonomy 
individual specimens of the various species of animals and 
plants are our only source of information, and to outlaw 
such specimens, or even one selected specimen, designated 
as the type or standard, and to substitute therefore a written 
description is to substitute dogma for science, to substitute 
authority for research, a folly of the worst sort. 
