Caput Medusa Saggital - Medical Etymology Humanities

The point of this Chapter dedicated to ideas in Cap, Cup, Caput or head is to go ahead and explore CAPital vistas including some from the Bible and classic mythology.

Di-CEPHalus Serpent or Coatl (Aztec "gift" to Spanish conquerors

To move "STRAIGHTFORWARD" ahead, note that the Cranium or Cephalon lacks "straight" features, except for one, the Saggital suture. To think "saggitally" points to Sage and Sagatious, as if to underscore that "thinking straight as an arrow" is a path to wisdom. The term Saggita (arrow), or "straight as an arrow" is applied to the Skull suture or line joining the left and right half of the CAP, CUP or CUPola of the head or Cranial vault. For anatomists, any plane parallel to the Saggital suture is a Saggital plane. These pages honor medicine and the healing arts, thus we honor Sagittarius, also known as Chiron, the centaur who taught Esculapius surgery and how to "shoot arrows straight". From Chiron we get Khirurgh, Chirofano or quirofano, Cirujano and Chiropractor, which in Ukrainian, Spanish and English stand for surgeon, surgical operating room, surgeon and therapists who heal by hand Manipulations (manus being hand).



Greek Sages had good sagittal sutures and were sagacious


Chiron (Father of Surgery and teacher of Esculapius)	Esculapius (God of Medicine)

Returning to "straightFORWARD", it also points toward METOPIC, FRONT and FOREHEAD, denoted in Spanish by FRENTE. In Ukrainian, forehead is CHOLO and it represents a landmark of man or CHOLOvik, as if to stress that in contrast to most other animals, humans have FORETHOUGHT. Indeed, the human FRONTAL cerebral lobe is larger than in most apes, perhaps one basis why humans can be more conFRONTational and generally more obnoxious and noxious.

It is self-evident that most organisms are monoCEPHALIC. However, ANENCEPHALIC births are well known, (a fatal CEREBRAL or CEPHALON maldevelopment). Recent studies show that nearly 70% of instances of anencephaly, spina bifida and related birth defects can be prevented by folic (foliage) acid pills taken before and during early pregnancy.

The presence of two, three, four or many heads is referred to as BICEPS, TRICEPS, QUADRICEPS and MULTI or POLYCEPHALYIA. In medical parlance, BICEPS, TRICEPS, QUADRICEPS, refers to muscles with two, three or four tendon "heads" or insertion points.



Hercules - Cerberus - Hydra

Concerning POLYCEPHALIA, the Bible speaks of multi-headed dragons and classic mythology offers delightful stories such as two of the labors of Hercules. In one labor Hercules had to face a Hydra and in another he had to capture Cerberus. The Hydra was a MULTICEPHALIC snake-like monster and Cerberus was a POLYCEPHALIC dog like monster guarding the exit of Hades or the underworld.



Polycephalic Hydra

Teratologists have described severely malformed "double headed "monsters" and clinicians have reported double headed "siamese" twins. These types of birth defects represent an incomplete "splitting" of an embryo into two nearly identical organisms. When identical twins fail to fully separate and the shared body parts (attachment) are relatively uncritical, such twins may survive in a "co-joined" state and often are "bi-cephalous".

Biblical theologians have debated if the domicile of the soul is the head or the heart. Provocatively, not long ago in South Africa, there was a debate where to inter or bury a "white" recipient of a "black" heart.

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