Stella musculosa nuchae

Stella musculosa nuchae

Cervical vertebrae

Muscles

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

human remains

Border lines of knowledge, in some provinces of medical science is a published and somewhat expanded version of Holmes’ introductory lecture to the students at Harvard Medical School at the opening of term on November 6, 1861. Although he refers to human anatomy as “an almost exhausted science,” Holmes goes on to list some of his own anatomical observations:

“The nucleated cells found connected with the cancellated structure of the bones, which I first pointed out and had figured in 1847, and have shown yearly from that time to the present, and fossa masseterica, a shallow concavity on the ramus muscle, which acquires significance when examined by the side of the deep cavity on the corresponding part in some carnivore to which it answers, may perhaps be claimed as deserving attention."

Holmes continues, commenting on the discovery of this artifact, as he notes how:

"I have also pleased myself by making a special group of the six radiating muscles which diverge from the spine of the axis, or second cervical vertebra, and by giving to it the name stella musculosa nuchæ. But this scanty catalogue is only an evidence that one may teach long and see little that has not been noted by those who have gone before him.”

Dissected and dried preparation of the muscles of the cervical vertebrae named by Holmes stella musculosa nuchae (“muscular star of the neck”).

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

1862

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Warren Anatomical Museum, WAM 00250

image

1 dissected and dried preparation

Anatomical preparation, human

physical object

DigID0002217

This excised and dried muscle preparation originated from an unknown dissection subject and was prepared by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1862 for demonstration in of his discovered neck group termed the stella musculosa nuchae. Holmes donated this mount in 1868 to the Warren Anatomical Museum.