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.

    46/326 (page 14)
    There is also a muscle descending from above the radius [hrachioradialis] which in the ape does not end below in a tendon, like those so far mentioned, but somewhat membra/ nously. By it this part is turned inwards [i.e., flexed]. No retinacular ligament surrounds this muscle, any more than the muscles inside which move the wrist [flexor carpi ulnaris]^ but it becomes both fleshy and membranous at the lower end of the radius and turns inward near the wrist/joint. You may call the fibrous end (A p o N E u R 5 s I s) a * muscle/tendon (h y m e ODE tenonta). This muscle has a middle position, being neither among the muscles of the outside of the limb nor among 246 those of the inside when the hand is in its natural position, for it rests on the whole Hmb and on the radius. Since anatomists divide the parts in the lower arm into two regions, caUing some of them ^exterior' and others *interior',^^ we must follow their example to avoid the impression of making innovations. This muscle we think should, on the whole, be classed with the exterior muscles. Another muscle within the forearm, of which I shall speak more clearly later, has a function unlike that of any muscle throughout the whole body, unless we except the calf It is on the surface inside the hand under the skin, between ulna and radius. It ends, as I have said [p. 7], in a flat tendon, extend/ ing under the smooth, hairless part of the hand [palmaris lon^us]. On removing the skin this muscle is seen in the middle of the muscles on the inner side. You may, if you choose, dissect the outer parts first, but let us begin from this muscle which extends under the skin with an expanded tmdon[palmar aponeurosis]. This tendon begins obviously to widen alitde above the wrist/ 24J joint. There one had best begin its dissection. It is plainly marked off from the muscles around and under it, being sur/ rounded with fine fibres which you can strip off even with your fingers and easily with a blunt lancet, raising the head of the tendon with the fingers or by inserting a hook. Then dissect it upwards to the joint at the elbow whence it issues. (For this