Bone Called "Luz" : With Notes on Medical Allusions in the Poems and Literary Remains of Samuel Butler (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Bone Called "Luz": With Notes on Medical Allusions in the Poems and Literary Remains of Samuel Butler

There remains the assumption that the Luz might be one of the sesamoids of the great toe, and this theory can best be considered in the light of what Vesalius says about it. At the time Vesalius wrote, the jewish tradition had been pretty well filtered through Arabic sources and, in the drastic passage subjoined, he disposes of it with his usual lively scorn for anything savoring of superstition. Speak ing of the sesamoid bones in the foot, Vesalius says Another one of these bones is that which the magicians and followers of occult philosophy so often call to mind as being fashioned like a chick pea, liable to no decay, and which, buried in the earth after death, will (they affirm) reproduce man like a seed on the day of the Last judgment. This may perhaps be the bone on either side, but is more likely to be the exterior, which is somewhat like a shelled pea, if we think of the middle part [of the split pea] for on bringing both bones in apposition we should obtain a whole pea. Then the internal os sicle is so large in men of great stature that a die might easily be made out of it. These bones dif fer, however, from those noted by the Arabs in that they mav be burned or broken like other bones, as well as in being surely liable to decay to some ex tent, although oi durable structure. But the dogma which asserts that man will be regenerated from this bone, of which we have just narrated the im mense fiction, may be left for elucidation to those philosophers who reserve to themselves alone the right to free discussion and pronouncement upon the resurrection and the immortality of the soul.

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