Galen on anatomical procedures : de Anatomicis administrationibus / translation of the surviving books with introduction and notes by Charles Singer.

  • Galen
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Galen on anatomical procedures : de Anatomicis administrationibus / translation of the surviving books with introduction and notes by Charles Singer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/326 (page 6)
    Not long ago I wrote also my De musculorum dtssectione, a separate work.^^ This was at the instance of colleagues who needed memoranda when travelling. They particularly re/ quested this as there had just reached us a tedious compila^ tion by Lycus.^^ It was of about 15,000 lines and contained nearly as many errors, even omitting many muscles. My work is probably but a third as long, but explains all the muscles. It deals faithfully with Lycus, a man ignorant of the function 228 of many muscles and missing some completely. By dissecting an ape guided by my book [De musculorum dissectione] any so minded may gain experience, but he will learn better from this present one how to handle the muscles in each part. On the body let your practice be first to discern the origin and insertion of each muscle, and whether it be uniform throughout its length or diversely compounded. You will find some muscles of a single nature, others of a multiple. The latter may look like several muscles superimposed on one another, criss/'crossed in their length. Such observations are useful to you both in surgery and for investigating function. For in operating we must sometimes sever muscles, because of deep abscesses, 22^ or necrosis or sepsis. By knowledge of the action of the severed muscle you may forecast the function destroyed and thus escape the charge that the disability is due to the treatment rather than the lesion. Surgical precision, too, demands knowledge of the action of the muscles, for the action of some is so important that, if they be inactive, the whole part becomes useless, whereas others initiate only insignificant actions. It is better to acquire this knowledge beforehand, so as to cut cautiously or dras/ tically according to need. Muscles are best divided along the fibres. Transverse incu sions, that is across the fibres, paralyse them but are sometimes necessary for the extension of narrow wounds which go deep. Such would be a stab wound at either end of a tendon; where 230 there is a risk that, while the parts on the surface close, those deeper may remain separate. Sometimes we are driven to sever the muscles for drainage, for the position of the wound is often