Dissertation on scientific nomenclature, medical and general : exhibiting the defects, anomalies, errors, and discrepancies of its present condition : with suggestions for its improvement / by R.G. Mayne.

  • Mayne R. G. (Robert Gray), 1808-1868.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dissertation on scientific nomenclature, medical and general : exhibiting the defects, anomalies, errors, and discrepancies of its present condition : with suggestions for its improvement / by R.G. Mayne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    60 DISSERTATION strings of a musical instrument on the inferior and posterior surface of the Fornix, it is mis-used, appears certain from the circumstance that no* other term of like orthography is to be found in anatomical language. There is a synonyme for the object to which the epithet Corpus psalloides has been applied, viz., Lyra, to which no objection can be offered. It is the error of substituting that corrupted epithet for the true and legitimate one of Corpus psaloides, and of thereby making it a synonyme of tbe Lyra, which it was never intended to be, that calls for reprobation and correction. To prove the justness of these remarks, I will now quote the definition usually given of the term psalloides, and then attempt to show wherein the error lies. “Psalloi'des. (From ■\uXkog, a stringed instrument, and uhog a likeness.) An appearance on the under surface of the fornix of the brain is called corpus psalloides.”* There is no such term to be found in the older medical writers, nor in any of the Greek Lexicons, classical or medical, within my reach; nor have I been able to trace such a word as -vpaAAo?, here put as its etymon, any where. Instead, how- ever, appears Psaloides,f the analogue of faT-oethlg for fa'htbo- aosg,X signifying, arched like a vault, and applied to a hard body borne or raised on three arches forming the roof of the third or middle ventricle of the brain. It thus ought, strictly, to be Psalidoides, being derived from fa).ig, idog. jj, an arched work, and sldog, resemblance; and it means,—like or resembling an arched work, arch, or vault. The Corpus psaloides, therefore, (adopting the contracted form of this word,) cannot be a synonyme of Lyra, which is the correct name for the appearance of cords or lines, on the under sur- face, posteriorly, of the Fornix, but is another term for the Fornix itself, viz., the arch-like, or arched body. Psalloides appears to have been corrupted from Psaloides; and although it would have been good in itself, if really deri- ved from such a word as fah7.og, and applied to any object