666 The Significance of Human Anomalies. [November, 
is not satisfactory. What of the vermiform appendage of 
the caecum, which answers no purpose save occasionally to 
produce a painful death. What, above all, of the many 
points in which, as Dr. Clevenger has shown (see “Journal of 
Science,” March, 1884, p. 134), the adaptation of man to an 
upright attitude is far from complete ? Surely such facts 
put design out of court, and leave merely a something which 
to us — who are designers — simulates design. 
VII. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN 
ANOMALIES. 
By Francis J. Shepherd, M.D. 
[The following article, communicated by its author to the 
“ Popular Science Monthly,” forms such an important 
contribution to the evidences of Evolution that we think 
it our duty to lay it before our readers.j 
<?- • — -r 
VER since the study of human anatomy has attracted 
any attention, variations in the arrangement of the 
different structures of the body have been noticed. 
For many centuries the signification of these variations was 
not understood ; and even as lately as 1840 Dr. Knox, of 
Edinburgh, who had the courage to state his conviction that 
they connected man with the lower animals, was looked 
upon, even by members of his own profession, as one 
prompted by the evil-one. In early times, when great pre- 
judice existed against the dissection of human bodies, and 
animals, such as monkeys, dogs, cats, &c., were frequently 
used as substitutes, the similarity of some of their muscles 
to those which occasionally occurred in man as anomalies 
forced the anatomists to remark on them as being curious 
coincidences, though in their published works they drew no 
conclusions from their occurrence bearing on the origin 
of man. 
In the view of our present knowledge of the animal king- 
dom and its development, and with the acceptance of the 
