r than
preserve what in many cases are the barbarisms introduced through the
Arabic, but it is doubtful whether any comprehensive reform in the
matter can be effected, so strongly entrenched in medical usage have
these terms now become.

Freind, in his "History of Medicine," already cited, calls attention to
the fact that the Arabs had an unfortunate tendency to change by
addition or subtraction of their own views the authors that they
studied, and wished to translate to others. This seems to have been
true even of some of the most distinguished of them. Of course, the idea
of preserving an author's text untouched, and making it clear just where
note and commentary came in, had not yet come to men's view, but quite
apart from this the Arabs apparently often tried to gain acceptance for
their own ideas by having them masquerade as the supposed ideas of
favorite classic authors.

Another unfortunate tendency among the Arabs was their liking for the
discussion of many trivial questions. Hyrtl, in his volume on "Arabian
and Hebrew Words in Anatomy,"[6] declares that it is almost incredible
how earnestly some trivial questions in anatomy and physiology were
discussed by the Arabs. He gives some examples. Why does no hair grow on
the nose of men? Why does the stomach not lie behind the mouth? Why does
the windpipe not lie behind the esophagus? Why are the breasts not on
the abdomen? Why are not the calves on the anterior portion of the legs?
Even such men as Rhazes and Avicenna discuss such questions.

It was this tendency of the Arabs that passed over to the Western
Europeans with Arabian commentaries on philosophy and science, and
brought so many similar discussions in the scholastic period. These
trivialities have usually been supposed to originate with the
scholastics themselves, for they are not to be found in the Greek
authors on whom the scholastics were writing commentaries, but they are
typically Oriental in character, and it must be remembered that during
the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, at least, Greek philosophy
found its way largely into Europe in Arab versions, and these
characteristically Arabian additions of the discussion of curious
trivial questions came with them and produced an imitative tendency
among the Europeans.

As a rule the more careful has been the study of Arabian writers in the
modern time, particularly by specialists, the clearer has it become that
they lacked nearly all origina