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

  • Galen
Date:
1956
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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.

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    such that the injury in its depth disappears from sight. Thus, for example, if a wound be received with the arm completely extended, obviously the patient cannot maintain that position during treatment, and the easiest position is that in which the deep injury is hidden. No medicament can then reach it nor can pus drain therefrom. It is then necessary to incise the wound again, and for that it is essential to know the direction of the fibres and the action of the muscles. The student must carefully do everything himself, even to 251 removing the skin. My predecessors actually remained in igno^ ranee of eight muscles, because they left to others the flaying of the apes, as at first I did myself Of these eight muscles two are designed to move the jaws [platysma faciei] and two join arms to chest [panniculus] [Figs. 11-13]. They erred also as to the other four and their tendons, for though all pass into tendons which are quite round, yet these expand to the thinness of a membrane, as happens under the sole of the foot and in the hand [in the plantaris and the paU maris lon^us]. All the anatomists have maintained, with some show of reason, that these tendons in the hands flex the fingers, whereas those in the leg draw back the heel. For in the foot there is no single muscle which Nature has designed as the origin of this tendon. However there is a bipartite muscle in 2^2 the calf of which one portion gives rise to this tendon ]_gastro^ cnemius].^^ In the hands the attachment of the tendon is [more] obvious, though in skinning it is inevitably torn away with the smooth part of the palm [palmaris longus]. Finding the tendon plainly extending from the muscle and seeing its lower end torn, and reasoning rather than carefully dissecting, they thought that it, too, moves the fingers like the muscles that lie under it [Fig. 14]. Many such facts have been discovered throughout the body, which the anatomists disregarded, shirking detailed dissection and content with plausible ideas. It is thus no wonder that they were ignorant of many things in the living animal. For if they pass as unimportant what is demonstrable only by careful