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Travel Town in Griffith Park is mostly about historic railroad locomotives and rolling stock but also displays trucks, autos, and wagons, both circus and milk. Ride the miniature railroad to survey the exhibits. Walk close to the massive beasts. Learn the differences between a 4-8-8-4 & a 4-4-0.

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S. Korea gifted a huge, 17-ton, bronze bell to the US to commemorate America’s 200th birthday. It resides in a pagoda-like pavilion on a grassy knoll overlooking LA harbor with Catalina Island not far away. On special days, the bell sounds its deep tone when struck with a log.

SQRD Lab ensures that legit weed is free from heavy metals, pesticides, bacteria, fungus & other yuckies. The lab samples every 50 pounds of leaves, gummies & brownies. Such tested & certified weed is likely only 20-30% of marijuana sold in CA. Health risks of illegal dope? ???

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An old military barrack in San Pedro houses the Belmont Shores Model Railroad Club. The layout is 25×90′ The main line is a scale 20 mi. Members bring their engines & rolling stock to run through the wilderness, rural & urban scenes reflecting the ’40s & 50s. Awesome details. Fun.

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The Marine Mammal Care Center, San Pedro, takes in malnourished, entangled, ill, & injured sea lions & seals, returns them to health, then tags & releases them. Current guest list & #s: elephant seals 29, harbor seals 2, sea lions 48. Sea lions can walk on land & bark. Seals can’t.

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Moon jellies. Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, San Pedro. They are 90% water & wax & wane in size from 1-12″ according to food availability. All 7 species of sea turtles eat them, & they are the sole source for leatherbacks, weighing up to 2000 lbs. Fortunately, moon jellies are common.

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Platinum Props on Rosecrans Ave. has something for everyone, especially if planning a birthday party, high school prom, wedding, or business event. Need a full-scale giraffe, robot, British phone booth, ninja turtle, Spiderman, gas pump, triceratops, nutcracker soldier, 6′ Oscar?

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Over 100 displaced, rescued, & zoo-born wild animals call the Wildlife Learning Center, Sylmar CA, home. These include a sloth, bald eagle, blue & red macaws, porcupines, marmosets. Private interactive tours allow close-ups with a hedgehog, armadillo, others. I fed the giraffe.

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Well-known recreational activities in Griffith Park include golf, tennis, hiking, horseback riding, star gazing, concert going and picnicking. Less well-known historical elements: a seminal moment for Babe Ruth, internment for WWII prisoners, and the old zoo that closed in 1965.

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Griffith Park, a 7 sq. mi. urban jewel, offers golf, tennis, zoo, observatory, train rides, Holllywood sign, amphitheater, museum, picnic areas, old landfill, and remarkably, wilderness hiking trails where one can lose all sense of civilization, maybe even spot a mountain lion.

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Kindred Spirits Care Farm joins rescued animals, at-risk people & sustainable farming. All benefit. The animals’ success stories can inspire people who have experienced abuse, abandonment or neglect themselves. Also, learning to grow food aids body, mind & spirit. Open Sundays.

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Hiram Sims, poet & educator, owns Sims Library of Poetry, which contains 10,000 volumes, 3 by Sims. Hiram’s interest in poetry began in middle school. A poem he wrote softened a girl’s heart sufficiently that she went with him for 2 weeks. Powerful words. Readings most Saturdays.

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JB Nethercutt prospered after going into business with his aunt, who founded Merle Norman Cosmetics. His collection of 130 perfectly restored and fully operative cars, often winners of Best in Show awards, is on display in Sylmar. It’s a duesy. It’s free.

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Surprise! Ethiopian food in horse country at N end of San Fernando Valley! Along with American & Mexican hearty breakfast/lunch fare, two Ethiopian/American sisters also serve traditional food & injera flatbread with spices & teff flour imported from their native country. Worth a trip. Vegetarian plate with lentils, chickpeas, yellow peas, red beets, cabbage, and collard greens on injera flat bread, made from teff flour..

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Inside a huge warehouse in Sylmar, Mb2 Raceway offers electric go-karting. Don a helmet, strap yourself in and fantasize Formula 1. Sitting inches off the track, the speed seems insane. The G-forces shout “spinout inevitable,” but it never happens. My best lap time: 27 secs. What’s yours?

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A natural spring behind University High School in West LA was the site of a Tongva village from 5000 BCE. From his ship in 1769, Spanish explorer Portola saw smoke from the village and visited. Friendly terms slowly decayed. Tongva descendants maintain this sacred site today.

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Discovery Cube is billed as a children’s museum, but adults have a great time too. Highly interactive learning. Make giant smoke rings. Sort recyclables against time. Play goalie & block shots. Hoist yourself with a block & tackle. Shop for healthy groceries & get scored. FUN!

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In I-210’s shadow in Lake View Terrace, LA Succulents’ huge greenhouse nurtures an amazing array of spiny plants. The owner started w/ patio hobby cacti, quit his day job, now in big-time business. Ships widely, but only to SW in winter since plants are cold intolerant. Stop by!

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Tujunga, at Mt. Lukens’ base, was remote from LA in the early 1900’s. Residential architecture was eclectic in the absence of building codes. Abundant local stone led to self-made homes popping up overnight. Despite earthquakes, some remain. Other wild styles coexist.

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The first segment of my 342-mile walk around the city limits of Los Angeles is hiking down to “civilization” from the top of Mt. Lukens (5075′ high), which is in the far NE corner of the San Fernando Valley. In the far distance, San Pedro and the Pacific Ocean are faintly visible about 35 miles away as the crow flies, but about 160 miles away as my feet walk.

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Los Angeles is the tallest city in the United States, measuring in elevation from sea level along the coast at Pacific Palisades, Venice, and San Pedro to 5075 feet high at the top of Mt. Lukens. The peak is in the far northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley and just barely inside the LA City limits. You could almost kick a rock off the top into Angeles National Forest.

Mt Lukens’ profile is far from iconic, only rarely snow covered, and whatever natural beauty it might have is marred by an array of communication towers that dominate the summit. It does not get much respect. Most Angelenos have never heard of it. Nonetheless, it seemed like the logical place to begin my walk around the Los Angeles city limits–a counterclockwise, 342-mile ziggy loop.

My first five miles, however, didn’t count, because that was the distance from the trailhead at the edge of development up a steep trail through chaparral to the summit. Canyons and ridges dropped away with breathtaking steepness in multiple directions, and looking toward “civilization,” the first signs of humans were vast areas of concrete pavement lining the outlets of the largest canyons. These are “catchment basins” designed to protect the adjacent residential neighborhoods from torrents of muddy water and debris that threaten the area during the rainy season. Looking farther in the distance, downtown LA was silhouetted to the east and in the far distance, about 35 miles away, the skyline of downtown Long Beach, just outside the LA City limits, was contrasted against the shimmering Pacific Ocean. Twenty-five miles beyond that, Catalina Island’s outline was faintly visible. It was a spectacular panorama, which, for a moment, dissolved my trepidations about the jaunt.

My hiking buddy, Thomas, and I took pictures of each other with the city in the background and then started walking the line—about six miles via another slightly less steep trail back to civilization. There were other trails that wandered off in several directions, none of them were marked with more than a steel post, some not at all. Thomas, a more experienced hiker of the California wilderness than I, was comfortable with such limited directional guidance, and with the assistance of the AllTrails smartphone app, we made it down with only several wrong turns, which AllTrails quickly alerted us to. It was good that he had downloaded the app and map, because even with civilization visible in the distance and with multiple communication towers looming above us, cell phone service was spotty at best.

Portions of our path down were on fire roads suitable for four-wheel drive vehicles, and we met a few intrepid mountain bikers and several hikers, some with their dogs. Other portions were narrow tracks with vegetation so close that it snagged our hiking poles with every swing. The worst part, however, was the multitude of fist-sized rocks that seemed to be annoyingly located anywhere I might want to plant my foot. Try to step around them or balance on top of them? I don’t remember which I was trying to do when I fell sideways across my trekking pole, breaking its aluminum shaft. But maybe it broke my fall sufficiently that I ended up with only a few knee and elbow scuffs. (Later at home I resorted on my orthopedic skills to repair the broken pole. It no longer collapses for transit and storage, but it is as stout and supportive as before.)  Five miles down, 337 to go. The panorama from the top sticks in my mind—a good way to start an adventure.

For the next several days, however, I was sore, not from the fall, but from delayed onset muscle soreness in my calves. Despite having trained beforehand on some seriously steep trails and streets in my neighborhood, my calves were still not conditioned for the nearly 3000-foot descent from summit to trailhead. Some people toss around the acronym DOMS when discussing delayed onset muscle soreness as if that makes them sound knowledgeable. They aren’t. Nobody is.  I will put my orthopedic-surgeon hat on for a minute.

A buildup of lactic acid is a frequently implicated culprit; and muscle contractions do produce lactic acid, but it is metabolized in an hour. DOMS typically does not develop for another day or two. It most frequently occurs when a muscle repeatedly gets longer rather than shorter while it is contracting, which may sound confusing. Consider, for instance, performing an elbow curl while holding a dumbbell. Your biceps contracts, and the dumbbell comes up to your shoulder. Now lower the weight slowly. The biceps is still firing, but it is getting longer as it allows the elbow to slowly straighten. The calf muscles do the same thing with downhill walking. Not only is the cause of DOMS unclear, so is the best treatment. Anecdotal advice abounds regarding the purported benefit of ice, heat, foam rolling massage, light exercise, and herbal preparations. None of the treatments are supported by good science. Time heals all wounds, and once the DOMS-affected muscle recovers, it is resistant to a repeat bout, at least for a while. I will be interested in seeing if I develop DOMS again on the way down from Mt. Lukens after celebrating the end of my trip.

After regularly informing regularly and broadly about the musculoskeletal system for six and a half years, MuscleAndBone has been inactive for the past three months. Why?

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I am fine, and I certainly have not run out of topics to discuss. Rather I have been expanding the scope of my interests, and doing so has proved to be an all-consuming effort.

First, I just signed a contract to write Ligaments, Quietly Holding You Together Until They Don’t. This book will complete my musculoskeletal trilogy. Whereas tendons connect muscles to bones, ligaments are the unsung fibrous straps that connect bones to bones. They serve the same purpose as hinge pins, and without them our muscles and bones would flop about devoid of purposeful movement. The topic is wide-ranging and will include interesting information on career-ending sports injuries, cellulite, flat feet, artificial ligaments, Cirque du Soleil gymnasts, massage therapy, and contortionism. I will soon begin mixing in ligament topics with further posts about muscles and bones.

Second, I have started intensely exercising my bones, muscles, and ligaments on an urban adventure–walking the 342-mile perimeter of the Los Angeles City Limits. I am progressing in roughly 10-mile segments twice a week, stopping at points of interest, and talking to people I encounter.

The preparation took months. I scrutinized maps to determine the street-by-street boundary lines, which are highly convoluted. I then identified museums, one-off shops, “best of” eateries, public art, graves of famous people, infrastructure, and noteworthy architecture among other attractions that lie less than a mile inside the boundary. This list contains over 200 places I plan to visit. Trying to line up these stops in a semi-direct path has been even more tedious since opening hours and opening days vary and sometimes a freeway or golf course cuts across what would otherwise be a direct footpath between points.

Like any adventure, I am coming across unanticipated gems, Who knew there would be a guinea pig rescue mission, a sacred Native American springs, and an amphitheater where fans can cheer for their favorite professional video gamer?

Periodically I will include essays about my urban exploration here at MuscleAndBone.info. I am also frequently posting snipits on social media, which has been another major learning curve. I would love to have you follow me on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. I am making amazing discoveries and would like to share them, even if it is just an image of a beautiful flower, an amusing sign, or a carefully restored car. Can my trek motivate you to be more adventuresome? We’ll see.

Before you saw this image, did the headline make you think that human trafficking was involved? Absolutely not. Rather these entirely legal and most thoughtful gifts merely require a visit to your favorite bookstore or the publisher’s website.

What’s more, when you contact me with your snail mail address and the names of those who are receiving Bones, Muscle, or both, I will send you personalized bookplates that you can insert into these coveted first editions.

Happy Holidays!

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For further gift ideas, here are the blog posts from past Decembers: Holiday Gift Guide for Frugal Bone Lovers, Holiday Gift Guide for Discerning Bone Lovers, Extravagant Gifts for Bone Lovers

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Learn more about Muscle. Join the Zoom interview with Chrissy Carr, Librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library. Wednesday, December 6, 2023, at 7 pm PST.

https://lapl.zoom.us/j/89419450496?pwd=WDZOdlV6Nkt1TTBNZkpuS1loWGFodz09

Meeting ID: 894 1945 0496 Passcode: muscle

At this time in years past, I have posted information about turkeys so you can sustain table talk on Thanksgiving once everyone has thoroughly hashed sports and politics.

2017 Twelve No-Fail Conversation Starters Regarding Wishbones.

2018 It Takes a Turkey to Call a Turkey.

2019 Wishbone-related Topics to Bring Up (Or Not) at Thanksgiving.

2021 A Bone-Lover’s Thanksgiving Nightmare.

2922 White meat or dark meat?

If you need fresh material this year, consider the answer to the title question, which is, “Ask to see the wishbone.” Here’s why.

This past summer, an outdoorsman friend of mine in Alaska sent me this bone, which he had picked up on the tide flats in Prince William Sound. No other bones were around to help identify this one’s original owner, and neither one of us had previously seen anything similar. By its heft, color, and appearance, it was clearly bone, but it did not have any areas where it would have contacted other bones. Hmmm… I sent photos of this mystery bone to several friends of mine at natural history museums. Even though several were experts in dinosaurs or other unlikely suspects, I asked them to forward the images to any of their colleagues who might be able to help. They did. It is a furcula, i.e., wishbone, but clearly not from a turkey. (The furcula is a fusion of the collar bones seen in most birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. In birds, it strengthens the breast bone and ribs to facilitate flight.) (Disclosing these facts alone should get you respect and extra pumpkin pie.)

The Idaho Virtual Museum includes a treasure trove of beautifully photographed individual bones from nearly 200 mammals and 100 birds, many courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. The mystery bone looks quite similar to the furcula images for the Canada goose and the tundra swan, both of which could plausibly be in the vicinity of Prince William Sound.

Next, I wondered, where does this sizeable bone reside in these long-necked creatures, under the chin or near the ribs? I stumbled on this image of an extinct New Zealand swan, which reveals the answer.

I also discovered that far beyond the iconic shape of chickens’ and turkeys’ wishbones, furculas come in a wide variety of shapes, which may not make them particularly useful for making wishes, but at least they can suggest the provenance of the bird at your holiday feast.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I saw this stunning exhibit of fish skeleton X-rays at the Frost Museum of Science in Miami. Inspired by the book Ichthyo:The Architecture of Fish, the Smithsonian Institution organized the exhibit. The Smithsonian Fish Library contains almost 5 million specimens and is the largest and most diverse collection of its kind. Over three-fourths of the world’s 32,000 fish species are included.

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Spotted on a Barnes and Noble shelf. The perfect gift for Halloween.

BONES: Hardcover, soft cover, Kindle, Audiobook

Muscle, The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement

OVER TWO YEARS IN “TRAINING”, THE BOOK Launches July 25, with a Special Pre-LAUNCH Offer

Introduction to Muscle

Did you just blink? Was it voluntary or involuntary? Either way, one set of tiny motors closed your eyelids, and another set opened them. As you read these words, the muscles in the iris of your eye are automatically moving to adjust the amount of light they let in, and those around your lens are focusing the words on your retina. These are examples of movement–one of life’s essential features.

Sages as far back as Aristotle have tried—and failed—to come up with a universally acceptable definition of life. As a reasonable approximation, biology teachers resort to the mnemonic MRS GREN, which represents movement, reproduction, sensitivity, growth, respiration, excretion, and nutrition. These are the tightly interconnected index functions performed by all life forms. Among the seven attributes, movement plays double duty for animals, including humans. Not only is muscle movement critical to our internal workings of respiration, digestion, and reproduction, it also can transport us in search for the best air, food, and mate as well as remove us from danger. In this regard, plants suffer. appreciate our bodies, improve our health, and move artfully at all ages, an understanding of this rippling tissue and its myriad powers is paramount.

While it is possible for you to rest your eye muscles all night, another muscle never stops. Your heart has been contracting roughly 70-100 times a minute since you were a three-week-old embryo. Cardiac muscle is amazingly durable and has the potential to sustain a human for over 100 years. Also working behind the scenes and out of our conscious control are the smooth muscles that cause us to blush, have goosebumps, and digest food. A third kind of muscle firmly attached their ends to bones and can produce incredible feats of . These skeletal muscles have enabled one man to complete sixty-eight pullups in a minute, another to high-jump over eight feet, and a woman to bicycle at a record speed of 184 miles per hour.

Muscles stand apart not only for what they can do, but also because—unlike so many of our bodies’ internal elements—they can be observed. Only thinly draped with skin, muscles telegraph to an observer the person’s overall health and vigor. The liver, kidneys, and other internal organs are just as vital as muscle, but unless they are way out of kilter, their states of health are not apparent from across the room. What’s more, only muscle is amenable to spot training. With heavy lifting, you can develop bulging biceps; but heavy thinking won’t enlarge your brain. (And although heavy drinking will enlarge your liver, it will be your whole liver, not just part of it, and detrimentally so.)  

Regardless of your habits, are you happy with your weight? Strength? Physique? Blood pressure? Blood sugar level? Mental and physical endurance? Sleep pattern? Particularly if you are sedentary for most of the day, you likely have to answer “no” to at least one of these questions. Furthermore, do you want a long and active life? If so, healthy muscles are key.

Our muscle mass peaks at about age twenty-seven and thereafter begins a long and inexorable decline, which with good lifestyle choices, we can slow. Still, along the way, we may face a variety of maladies, including hypertension, myocardial infarction, gastric reflux, stress incontinence, or erectile dysfunction. All these problems stem from some muscle disorder, and a thorough understanding of how these derangements occur and can be treated guide informed lifestyle and treatment choices. Such understanding will have growing importance in future years as today’s cutting-edge, emerging, and imagined technologies evolve and mature. These include perfecting artificial hearts, editing genes to cure muscular dystrophy, and advancing immunology understanding that will make pig-to-human heart transplants feasible.   

Maladies aside, expected increases in life expectancy and leisure time will afford us the opportunity to enjoy our muscles wisely over extended years. Will diet supplements, exercise equipment, and gym memberships help? They come with enticing claims for building muscle and losing fat. But how many of them are phony, and which are scientifically based, life-maintaining, and life-enhancing advances that we should embrace? Answers to all these questions require an understanding of strength and movement.

Muscle: The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement is a guided tour through this force producer’s myriad virtues and capabilities. Ranging between the disparate worlds of biology, art history, popular culture, and bodybuilding, as well as the frontiers of gene editing and stem cell research, you will come to understand and marvel at muscle’s structure and function and be in position to understand new developments. We need, for example, to find a way for astronauts to maintain muscle mass during a zero-gravity trip to Mars. And is it true that the act of smiling can make you happier?

Humans’ infatuation with muscles spans millennia.  Depicted in bronze and marble, ancient Grecian sculptures of Titan, Atlas, Heracles, and fellow immortals are exceedingly buff, although it is unlikely that their sculptors had any direct knowledge of muscle anatomy. That changed in the Renaissance, and it shows. Michelangelo’s muscular and lifelike David is a stunning tribute to the sculptor’s genius and to Michelangelo’s clandestine cadaver dissections. More recently, icons of pop culture, imagined and real, include Popeye, Superman, the Jolly Green Giant, Charles Atlas, and Steve Reeves—all with ripped physiques. Anyone who wants to enhance their own musculature to emulate Marvel movie-stars and those of us who just wish to maintain health and well being without getting “swole” need a firm grasp of the subject. Let’s get moving.

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Special Offer: Purchase MUSCLE prior to its launch date, July 25, 2023 and receive a personalized, signed bookplate, which you can insert in your first edition.

Send your snail mail address and first name for the inscription to CONTACT.

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Order your copy now from the publisher, WW Norton, or from

Amazon Barnes & Noble Books-a-Million Bookshop Hudson IndieBound Walmart

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Reviews for Muscle

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Old Bones: In order to get a sense of the changing economy, investors watch market indexes, unemployment rates, and maybe the rise and fall of hemlines. Then acting on their favored information, they might speculate in Bitcoin or other ephemera, but more tangible indicators and opportunities await. If one really wants to predict where the economy is going, the fluctuating prices for Tyrannosaurus rex fossilized skeletons may be the best indicator to watch. Presently there are only 20 relatively intact sets of T rex fossils, and owners seem attached to them. but more fossils will be unearthed. How sensitive will they be to market pressures? When should the astute investor jump in?

I blogged about the T rex marketplace several years ago and recounted the discovery and eventual auction of Sue for roughly $8 million in 1997 (more like $13 million in today’s dollars). In 2019, I also alerted potential buyers to the availability of a baby T rex fossilized skeleton on eBay for a “buy it now” $2.95 million. It did not sell, and I do not know its present whereabouts.

What’s happened more recently?

• In 2020, an anonymous bidder purchased another remarkably intact T rex, Stan, for a staggering $32 million, the highest price ever paid for a fossil. Bull market!
• In November 2022, Christie’s in Hong Kong canceled the auction of Shen at the last minute. Market crash! The auction house stated that the specimen would “benefit from further study.” Shen, which means gold-like in Chinese, had been expected to sell for between $15 million and $25 million before an astute observer noted that parts of Shen may be replicas of Stan’s bones.
• In December 2022, Sotheby’s brought the gavel down on a T rex skull, Maximus, for $6.1 million, far less than the expected $15 million to $20 million. Bear market!
• Then in April 2023, Trinity, an assemblage of parts from three different T rexs brought in a mere $4.8 million, less than the Zurich auctioneer’s estimated range of $5.6 to $9 million. Recession? Depression?

Bull or bear, the whole idea of auctioning privately acquired fossils severely sickens academic paleontologists. Amateur and professional fossil hunters yearn to discover a pot of gold and may not excavate, record, and preserve their finds as carefully as would academically inclined paleontologists. Also mega-wealthy private investors can outbid museums for any discovered bounty, potentially removing these world treasures from scientific scrutiny and public appreciation.

Such was the worry when Stan fell into the hands of an anonymous bidder. But a year and a half later, by sleuthing American trade records, National Geographic magazine tracked this nearly 6-ton shipment from New York to Abu Dhabi. Officials there owned up the the purchase. When their new natural history museum opens in 2025, Stan will be the featured attraction.

Decide for yourself about bidding on the next T rex that comes on the market. Just remember that your budget should include plans for a display area that is accessible to the public and that is suitable for featuring your 40-foot-long, 12-foot-high, stone-bone investment, far more solid than Bitcoins or tweets regardless of market fluctuations.

If you are pinched for funds at the moment but still would like a T rex for your living room, polyurethane casts of Stan are available for a down-to-earth $120,000.

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A New Book: Launching July 25:

Muscle, The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement

Goodreads Rating: FIVE STARS “…some laugh out loud moments.”

To avoid sell-out disappointment, pre-order now WW Norton Amazon Barnes and Noble Books-a-Million Bookshop Hudson IndieBound Walmart

Let me know your snail mail address, and I will send you a personalized bookplate for your precious first edition! Click CONTACT.

Read the early reviews: Kirkus Publishers Weekly Goodreads

Excerpted from Muscle, The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement, Chapter One, Discovery and Description

Length determines the name for some muscles. Thumb in Latin is pollux, and it has two muscles that fold (flex) the thumb across the palm— the flexor pollicis longus and flexor pollicis brevis. Size matters too. I am guessing that you are presently sitting on your gluteus maximus muscles. (Gluteus comes from Greek gloutos, buttock.)
Between the gluteus maximus and the pelvis are the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus muscles. And smack against the backof the hip joint is a matched pair of small muscles, the superior and inferior gemelli— twins. In the abdominal wall, alignment is everything. The rectus (straight) abdominis (the highly valued “six-pack”) runs longitudinally, while the obliquus externus abdominis and transversus abdominis run their separate routes.

Other muscles resemble geometric shapes and are so named.
There are three “quadratus” (square) muscles. One is in the foot,
one is deep in the forearm, and the other crosses the hip joint. The
rhomboid major and minor are parallelogram-shaped muscles that
attach on the thoracic spine and the shoulder blade; and the deltoid,
crossing over the top of the shoulder, is the shape of the Greek letter
Δ. The serratus anterior has a jagged origin from multiple ribs on
the front of the chest, and the gracilis is indeed slender or gracile— a
long, thin muscle on the inner thigh.

Several muscles’ names describe their action. The cremaster (a
muscle that lifts the testicle) derives its name from the Greek verb
for “I hang,” and the levator scapulae raises the shoulder blade.
A few muscles’ names simply identify their origins and insertions.
For instance, the sternocleidomastoid is the strappy muscle on the
side of the neck that turns your head to the side. One end attaches
on the breastbone (sterno) and collarbone (clavicle, cleido) and the
other end fastens to the mastoid process of the skull, which is palpable
just behind the earlobe.

Some muscles received names of objects they resemble. Piriformis, a hip muscle, is pear-shaped. The deep calf muscle, the soleus, is sandal-shaped. Overlying it is the bulgy gastrocnemius, literally the belly of the leg. In each palm and sole are four worm-shaped muscles, lumbricales manus and lumbricales pedis, respectively. The Latin name for earthworm is Lumbricus.

My favorite muscle name is sartorius, which applies to the longest muscle in the body. It starts high on the pelvic rim, crosses the front of the thigh, and finishes on the inside of the leg just below the knee. Contracting the sartorius on both sides causes the hips to flex, the thighs to rotate outward, and the knees to flex, resulting in the owner ending up in a cross- leg sitting position. This is the position that tailors traditionally assumed when working on garments in their laps. Sartor in Latin means tailor, hence sartorius’s name.

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MUSCLE, The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement, launches July 25, 2023. Order now.

Purchase before launch date and CONTACT us with your snail mail address to receive a personalized bookplate.

Excerpted from Muscle, The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement, Chapter One, Discovery and Description

While interest in and knowledge of anatomy increased steadily during the Renaissance, differentiating and naming the newly observed muscles proceeded with fits and starts. Andreas Vesalius, in his landmark anatomy tome of 1543, tended to number them. In addition to naming two jaw muscles and the six-pack, he also named an arm muscle the anterior cubitum flectentium musculus[NG1] —though it seems, in this case, a nice succinct number would have been more user-friendly. Had all the muscles retained numbers, however, it could get cumbersome if somebody asked you to flex your number 489 and you couldn’t remember which one it was, out of the roughly 650 that humans have.

Fortunately, anatomists after Vesalius pitched in and gave the muscles descriptive names and renamed the anterior cubitum flectentium musculus the biceps. That’s part of the good news. The bad news is that because Latin was the language of science at the time, some of the names may seem foreign to those of us whose Latin skills are languishing. The other part of the good news is that with a uniform Latin terminology, anatomists and health-care providers around the world could and continue to communicate clearly with one another; and with a bit of linguistic dissection, the names are not all that foreign.

Some of the original names were outright poetic. Consider, for instance, the contributions of Jan Jesenius (1566–1621), a Bohemian physician, politician, and philosopher. He named the muscles controlling the eyeball’s movement amatorius (muscle of lovers), superbus (proud muscle), bibitorius (muscle of drinkers), indignatorius (muscle of anger), and humilis (muscle of lowliness). Twenty years later Jesenius was executed, but it was his political allegiance rather than his muscle naming that got him in trouble. It is too bad that in 1895 anatomists standardized the nomenclature and dully renamed the eye muscles according to their location (superior, inferior, medial, lateral) and alignment (rectus [straight] and oblique). In fact, contraction of the medial rectus muscles would make one cross-eyed, so maybe the Terminology Committee should have left them as the muscle of drinkers (bibitorius).

Most names are straightforward and need only a smattering of Latin to understand. For instance, some muscles received names according to their location, such as the subclavius (under the clavicle) and the intercostales externi (external layer, between the ribs). Others are named by the number of their parts: Bi- means two, and the biceps has two origins, one from the shoulder blade, one from the upper arm bone. The triceps has three origins, and the quadriceps has . . . well, guess.

Muscle, The Gripping Story of Strength and Movement, launches July 25, 2023. Order now.

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