A sure guide, or, The best and nearest way to physick and chyrurgery that is to say, the arts of healing by medicine and manual operation : being an anatomical description of the whol body of man and its parts : with their respective diseases demonstrated from the fabrick and vse of the said parts : in six books ... at the end of the six books, are added twenty four tables, cut in brass, containing one hundred eighty four figures, with an explanation of them : which are referred to in above a thousand places in the books for the help of young artists / written in Latine by Johannes Riolanus ...; Englished by Nich. Culpeper ... and W.R. ...

Chap. 11. Of a Tendon.

A Tendon is the least Part of a Muscle, by which we bend and move the bones. It is thought to consist of a Nerve, and a Ligament mixed together; so as that a Tendon is not found, unless it be in that Part of the Muscle where it is affixed to the Parts moved.

But a mans Eyes (if he wil beleeve them) tels him, that they are from the first for mation, and that they are the cheifest Part of the Muscle, and take their beginning where the Muscle begins, and are disseminated through its whol Body. if it be a Nervous Tendon in the beginning, such it is in the end; if it be like smal strings at beginning, they are united to forme the Tendon afterwards. Such Tendons those Muscles have which perform strong actions, in bowing and extending, and tonical motion; as in the superior and inferior Limbs, and in the back to uphold the Trunk of the body. The rest of the Muscles, as they are fibrous at the beginning, so they are at the end.

The hard and stiff Tendons have much Fat about them to soften them, that they may the easier be moved; and therefore those Fibres dispersed amongst the Flesh, are nothing else but the Tendon divided, and the Tendon nothing else but the Fibres united; and therefore a Tendon is either compact and solid, or else divid∣ed into Fibres.

Also Tendons are sollid or plain, or Membranous or round, or short or long. If they are Nervous at the beginning of the Muscle, so they are at the end. Som∣times they are Nervous at the end of the Muscle, though the Head of it be Fleshy.

The hardness of a Sollid, long and Membranous Tendon, its thickness and Silver color is excellent: So that Fallopius affirmed, nothing was more beautiful in the Body of man, than a Tendon, and the Chrystalline Humor of the Eye.

Wherefore a Tendon, seeing it is a Similary Part, is bred of Seed, and is of a peculiar substance, no where to be found out of a Muscle. It wel deserves to be cal∣led the cheifest part of the Muscle, upon which the action of the Muscle depends; the other Parts work together with the Tendon in the same action.

Notes

• Original.