ABSTRACT
Some medical terms originate from their resemblance to musical instruments (Bossy, 1999). The tympanic membrane refers to the Latin tympanum, meaning drum. The syrinx, song organ in birds, is derived from the Greek syrinx, syringos, meaning flute, and gave rise to the term syringomyelia (Olivier d’Angers, 1824), the anatomical lesions of the spinal cord having been compared with the pipe of a flute. In the sixteenth century, Bartolomeo Eustachi and Gabriele Fallopio described horns, tuba in Latin, in the human body: the Eustachian or pharyngotympanic tube on the one hand, the Falloppian or uterine tubes on the other hand (Eustachi, 1564; Falloppio, 1569). The neurosciences were not an exception to this trend: in the last centuries — the hippocampal commissure was compared with a lyre or a psaltery.
