Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.t1.4

c7.t1.4

3. Sometimes processes, or protuberances, of bones were popularly known by special names, and regarded as special bones. Examples are the malleoli, or ankle-bones, and the styloid processes, or wrist-bones. In such cases it was probably a mere concession, made by the early Indian anatomists, to popular usage that they enumerated them in their lists as separate bones. In other cases the separate enumeration of processes or protuberances was due to an exaggerated regard for the homological principle. For example the right and left halves of the skeleton were regarded as homologous. Hence, seeing that the vertebral column lay in the median line, the transverse processes on the right and left of the several vertebrae were counted as separate homologous bones (§ 59). Sometimes, again, it was a fancy for artificial symmetry which led to the multiplication of bones. To this cause, probably, is due the assumption of the existence of a third joint in the thumb and great toe (§ 47), and of twelve costal tubercles instead of ten (§ 58).