Anatomical terms: towards development of terminologies (terminogenesis)

Anatomy is older than its name that means "cutting out" in Greek. The cut out parts must bear a name. This historical review is an attempt to investigate the evolution of the anatomical names from the prehistorical times when humans had no handwriting to record anatomy until the discovery of printing when anatomical names could become disseminated in printed books. Throughout indeterminately long times, the people who spoke anatomical terms were the embalmers who touched human bodies, the priests who read the future in the entrails of animals and the magicians who prepared healing charms from various human, animal or plant components. But we have no traces of their words. Having invented handwriting, early Egyptians and Mesopotamians were among those who began to give specific names to parts of the body. Yet it remains difficult to always understand them as they considered that each part of the body was inhabited by a specific god. Nevertheless, some of the names they used influenced the new language that unfolded in the South East corner of Europe, the unifying Greek language. Greek poets like Homer, philosophers like Aristotle and physicians like Hippocrates were using anatomical words that were later developed by anatomists like Herophilos, Erasistratos or Rufos to designate specific structures. Greek became the language of Western medicine by the 4 century BCE, but Latin later superseded it in terms of political and linguistic influence. This meant that translators, such as Celsus, played a major role during the first years of the Christian era. Nevertheless, it was still in Greek that Galen produced an immense medical literature in which anatomy was prominent. However, because Galen dissected animals, he unfortunately stamped in the minds of his successors errors that would last from his death (probably in 216 CE) until the Renaissance in the 15 century. Even as the world of Latin imploded, the language maintained its influence. In the West, Christianity spread, preserving Greek and Latin manuscripts in its abbeys and cathedrals. In the East, numerous Greek manuscripts had survived. After the advent of Islam in 622 CE, a "House of Wisdom" was created in Baghdad at the beginning of the 9 century CE. Under Hunayn ibn Ishak, a team of experts undertook to translate into Syriac or Arabic all the manuscripts collected by the armies of the Caliph. Thanks to them, Greek science, medicine and literature were studied and Arabic translations could be found throughout the expanding Islamic world. Avicenna could thus write amongst many books his most famous medical opus, the "Canon of Medicine", which influenced medicine, and anatomy, until well beyond the 16 century. On the Western side of the former Roman Empire, the organisation of medical practice had changed. It was linked to the abbeys and churches where healing monks and lay people (men and women) were instructed and entrusted with helping "the sick and the poor ones". In the 9 century, a medical school emerged in Salerno (Italy) and flourished there until the end of the 13 century, more or less independently from the Church. During the 11 century, Arabic manuscripts had found their way to Salerno and other healing institutions. A network of Latin translators from Arabic