Note (7) — BOOK VIII.

7. But at the first rib, &c.) This whole paragraph is extremely obscure. The variation of reading in the older copies does not in the least lessen the difficulty. If we were allowed to understand by jugulum, the neck, the whole description, lame as it is, could then answer no bone but the clavicle; but jugulum in no other place of this work seems to be used for any thing else but the clavicle, so that id ipsum, &c. would appear to be the beginning of the description of that bone.—Morgagni thinks, that though the description is far from just, yet that most of the words, as they now stand, relate to the spine of the scapula, which may be said to sustain the clavicle; and it is observable, that if our author does not intend the spina scapulæ here, he makes no mention of it at all. Vide Morgagni, Ep. vii. p. 177. I must own the reading appears to me so much depraved, that it is impossible to determine, precisely, what our author has had in view.