518 M. H. REYNOLDS. 
those muscles are, their origin, insertion, direction of fibres 
and their function. He must have definite ideas of the loca¬ 
tion, course and distribution of the larger blood vessels and 
nerves if he would make very deep incisions and punctures, 
as he sometimes must do. It is very unpleasant to cut the 
dorsal, superior cervical or even larger branches of the ver¬ 
tebral, under several inches of muscular tissue. 
The paniculus is a broad sheet of muscular and aponeu¬ 
rotic tissue, somewhat triangular in shape, just under the 
skin and applied to the sides of thorax and abdomen. The 
subcutaneous thoracic, a branch from the brachial plexus, 
with superficial branches of the cervico- and dorso-spinal 
nerves, furnish nerve force. Its blood comes through the 
dorsal, vertebral, external thoracic and superior scapular, 
with all the dorsas-spinal intercostals. 
The cervical ligament, through its surgical importance 
demands more than passing notice. All the superior cervical 
muscles are arranged in layers beneath the funicular and on 
either side of the lamellar portion. The peculiar anatomical 
features of this great ligament and its association with re¬ 
lated muscles, explain, in part, the prevalence and persistence 
of fistulas in the cervical region. It is easily divided for 
study into two portions, the funicular and lamellar. The 
former is simply a wide band of yellow elastic fibres with one 
end inserted in the spinous process of the first dorsal verte¬ 
bras with the dorso-lumbar ligament; the other at the cervi¬ 
cal tuberosity of the occipital bone. Its function is to support 
the head. The lamellar consists of two equal plates of sim¬ 
ilar tissue closely applied, placed vertically in the median 
line and filling the triangular space between the funicular 
portion and the cervical vertebras. It is attached below to 
the spinous processes of last six cervical, to second and third 
dorsal vertebras, and above to the funicular. They are in re¬ 
lation externally to one branch of the ilio-spinal ligament, the 
transverse-spinous muscle of the neck and great complexus. 
The superior cervical muscles, seventeen in number on each 
side, are arranged in four fairly well defined layers. 
The trapezius is a thin, triangular muscle, covering the 
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