The anatomical use of Latin has figured in a number of posts—not least 'Saying Grace in Latin' with its addendum.
In that post I referred to my Anatomical Wordbook (pp. 14-21), where a list of Latin terms that appear in the names of muscles has been collected. To quote from the preface to that section:
Elements of a muscle's action, position, shape etc. are often implied by its name. In order to help facilitate translation of a muscle name into English the following list of words applied to muscles and their meanings is given. By chaining together the meanings of each word in the muscle's name and then reordering them where appropriate, a more readily remembered description of the muscle is obtained e.g. flexor digitorum superficialis renders Flexor/Of the fingers/Superficial. Upon reordering, the muscle name reads: The superficial flexor of the fingers'.
That list can now be viewed/downloaded using the hyperlink below.
Anatomical Eponyms. Being a Biographical Dictionary of those Anatomists whose Names have become Incorporated into Anatomical Nomenclature, with Definitions of the Structures to which their Names have been Attached and References to the Works in which they are Described
I once heard the story of an anatomist who was invited to dine at High Table at an Oxbridge college. Prior to dinner, he was being shown around and was asked if he would be willing, as an honoured guest, to say Grace before dinner. He immediately agreed. He was then informed that Grace was always in Latin and asked, ‘You do have Latin, don’t you?’ Too shamefaced to admit that he knew no Latin, he responded, ‘Of course.’ Then came the dilemma of how to say Grace in Latin without knowing a word of the language. But of course he did; he suddenly realised. He was an anatomist. Much of the body was named using Latin terminology. So he thought of the longest Latin descriptor he could think of. That was a small muscle beside the nose—the levator labii superioris alaeque nasi. So when the time came, he intoned the muscle’s name, added ‘Amen’ at the end, and he got away with it.
FYI—Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi means 'raiser of the upper lip and wing of the nose.' But you knew that, didn't you?
See also: An Anatomical Wordbook (pp14-21).
Addendum
Since writing and scheduling the publication of this post, I have come across the following in chapter 6 of Richard Gordon's 1957 novel 'Doctor in Love'. A much older doctor explains to the Gordon...
"Of course, since my day they've got an anglicized the whole anatomical nomenclature," he went on. "Which is a pity because it gives the medical profession at least the appearance of being educated like gentlemen if they can mouth a few Latin words occasionally. I remember the time I found myself asked to say grace at some luncheon or other. I bowed my head and intoned: 'Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, Amen.' A small muscle in the front of the face, you will recall. No one was any the wiser."
Among the earliest Greek philosophers—now commonly known as the pre-Socratic philosophers—stands Thales of Miletus* (c. 626/623–c. 548/545 BC). Living around 150 years before Socrates, he is often considered not only among the first chronologically but also among the foremost for the quality of his thought. Among his work in geometry, he is remembered eponymously in Thale’s theorem. However, it is not necessarily for the scientific accuracy of his thought that he is still held with some regard. It is also for his attempts at trying to make sense of the world; attempts that missed the mark. For example, Thales thought that the Earth floated on water.
Of interest here is that he held water to be the first principle—or arche—of everything. That is, everything in nature was based on a single elementary substance, which Thales proposed was water. Although it may seem odd to us today, in the ancient world this view became widely influential.
Socrates took a different approach. He questioned how we could be sure about our views. He famously refused to speculate about such matters. Such a proposal as Thales’ would not have fit well with him. However, how much of a speculation is it to suggest that water is the ‘first principle’?
Apart from the scientific basis of water for life (see an earlier post) water has a special place in human experience. This is because of its physiological importance.
Viewed in terms of physics, water is a molecule: one of the most widely known. Many who do not know what ‘H2O’ means in the scientific sense have heard of it and are aware that it relates (in some way) to water.
Water is made of elements—hydrogen and oxygen; it is a molecule and not itself an element. But as a molecule, water does have a fundamental position with respect to life. Indeed, the search for extraterrestrial life typically goes hand in hand with the question of liquid water being present. That is, not just ‘H2O,’ which may be in the form of ice or vapour, but ‘liquid H2O.’
Water provides a physical medium within which the processes that gave rise to life can take place. That is where the processes that characterise life first occurred and now continue to take place. All organisms, whether they are plants or animals, are water-based. No living thing is devoid of water. To be devoid of water is to be lifeless—even dead.
An interesting creature is the tardigrade. This tiny creature can resist considerable environmental extremes—including exposure to outer space—without dying. They can take on an inactive state when put to extremes and return to life afterwards when returned to a normal environment. One extreme that they can withstand is desiccation.
However, as I understand it, liquid water may be lost, resulting in the tardigrade taking on an inactive form called a ‘tun.’ However, despite desiccation, some water molecules remain within the substance of the quiescent tun. This is because of the presence of the sugar trehalose. Indeed, other organisms that can also withstand desiccation also have this mechanism. While this is not the only mechanism available to the tardigrade—for example, it is able to modify certain structural proteins in response to desiccation—water nevertheless has a fundamental place in its continued existence—even when inanimate.
I am not aware of any of the existentialist philosophers ever giving water much attention in human existence. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre briefly discusses the experience of being-in-the-world in relation to the element of water, but this is not a major part of his philosophy. Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, uses the image of a river to represent the absurdity of human existence, but again, this is a passing reference rather than a central theme.
Only the philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote about the symbolism of water in his book Water and Dreams. He explored how water is often associated with purity, life, and the unconscious. However, Bachelard was more of a phenomenologist than an existentialist, and his focus was on the imaginative experience of water rather than its existential significance.
* Mietus was a Greek colony in Ionia on the western coast of Asia Minor and so not in the territory that forms modern-day Greece.