Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t3.7

c7.s2.t3.7

(taruṇa) bones. The costal cartilages (1-7, a, in Fig. 14) form the links that connect the sternal end of the shafts of the ribs with the sternum. But only the seven upper ribs (distinguished as the ‘true’ ribs) are in this way connected. The cartilages of the upper three ‘false’ ribs (eighth, ninth, tenth) are attached to the cartilage of the seventh rib. The remaining two ribs (eleventh and twelfth) do not connect at all with the sternum, being ‘floating’ ribs. It will be seen that these facts admit of two ways of counting the number of costal cartilages. One may take them to be either seven or eight. We have only seven cartilages, if we take those of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth ribs which are attached to one another as constituting but a single cartilage; or we obtain eight cartilages, if we count the cartilage of the seventh rib and the cartilaginous attachments thereto of the eighth, ninth, and tenth ribs as two distinct cartilages. Applying these alternative views to the whole of the cartilages, or ‘tender’ bones, of the breast, we have to count either seven or eight cartilages on either side of the sternum, that is, a total of either fourteen or sixteen cartilages, or ‘tender’ bones.