Herophilus and Erasistratus : a bibliographical demonstration in the Library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 16th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson.

Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Herophilus and Erasistratus : a bibliographical demonstration in the Library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 16th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson. 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.

    19/42 (page 21)
    is here given with the Greek word translated as dux introduced in brackets:— In hisce non solum dux (o IirHTflP) aberravit sed & eos qui raedicinse dant operam diversos egit, & Hippocratis dicta nequaquam est assecutus, & simul a rebus minime cum proposito congruentibus argumentationem ineptiorem constituit. ToRCULAR—Calamus Scriptorius—Duodenum—Lacteals. Nothing has served to preserve the memory of Herophilus so much as the name by which the conflux of the sinuses at the occipital protuberance is still known—the Torcular Herophili. The Greek Xrfvog, transmitted to us by Galen from Herophilus, has been translated into Latin as torcular (see Kuhn's edition, Tom. Ill, p. 708 ; Tom. II, p. 712 ; see also Daremberg's translation. Tome I, p. 581). It has been i-egarded as doubtful, from Galen's accounts of it, what the Xrjvo'c really was; at least Vesalius* was not clear about it, and Marx and Greenhill f confess their inability to solve the problem. The following paragraph from Hyrtl's Onomatologia Anatomica (Wien, 1880.. p. 552) is an impor- tant contribution to the discussion of the meaning of the Torcular Herophili :— A very ancient and, in spite of its vague signification, a carefully preserved word in anatomy, in all ages, is the Torcular HerojMli— (die Aderpresse) the vein-press. The two places in Galen, which have to do with the Torcular, are distinct enough, so that it cannot be doubted which sinus of the dura mater was indicated by this striking name. As all translators and interpreters of Galen have not been clear upon this point, we shall reproduce these passages. * Vesalius, De corporis humani Fabrica, Lib. Ill, cap. xiv, according to Galen it is left ambiguous whether the Greeks at first so named the meeting of the first and second sinuses of the dura mater from wliich the third and fourth proceed : or whether, indeed, they meant the end of the fourth sinus of tlie dura mater opposite the testes cerebri and stretching into the ventricles. t British and Foreign Medical Review, vol. xv, 1843, ]). 111.