Not man, but man-like : a reply to Not like man of the Professor of Anatomy in the University of Melbourne / by Wil. Thomson.

  • Thomson, William, 1819-1883.
Date:
[1863]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Not man, but man-like : a reply to Not like man of the Professor of Anatomy in the University of Melbourne / by Wil. Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    is, after all, as old as Aristotle. The name is as much a resuscitation as the anatomy, and both are equally erroneous with the logic. fier^akai. Ka« et SuktuXoi uianep ol rivu y^eipHii/' 6 fieaov fiuKpoTUTOV.'' And afterwards adds :— TToSos' eK /lev ttoSos, kujo. to t^s 7nepp>]<s e)(^u70P' eK ■^^eipot, raWa fieprj :— It has feet peculiar ; for they are like large hands, and the fingers are like the fingers of the hand ; the middle being the longest. Just as if they were compounded of a hand and a foot: of a foot indeed in the hindmost pai-t of the heel; and of a hand in the other parts, If from this description the Stagirite had been required to coin an ordi- nal term out of that language which seems to some modems dead and fossilized in more senses than one, he would have said, not cheiropod (hand-foot), but dadylopod (finger-foot), unless some progressive changes have occurred in the mean- ing of Greek roots under the process of artificial selection according to university notions. Coming to the special anatomy of the foot, the fii*st departure from the human type is stated to be in the ento- cuneiform bone ; but as Owen has afready given a full account of this variation, there is no particiolar necessity for another original description. Then follows details of the tibialis anticiis muscle, and the now familiar extensor ossis metacarpi poUicis, with this new phase, that it is no longer metacarpi but metatarsi; and it is to be regretted that the same sensible change was not made in the pedal technicali- ties throughout, if not to show contrition, at least to avoid confusion sure to arise in following the descriptions when the pai-ts are at one time spoken of as pertaining to a foot and at another time to a hand. There is not in the whole lecture stronger proof of the deficiency of the lecturer as a philosophical anatomist than the account given of these so-called two muscles. From a