Cranial nerves ( cran ; Longet, 1842 ) : The topographic division of vertebrate craniospinal nerves (Herrick, 1915) that exit the cranium despite their origin; for example the spinal root of accessory nerve, which is motor in function, arises from the ventral horn of the spinal cord (Galen, c162-c166) but exits the cranium with the vagus nerve (Galen, c192 AD), another cranial nerve. Most of them were known to Herophilus (335-280 BC), the founder of human anatomy (see Solmsen, 1961; von Staden, 1989), and the term itself was first used for macrodissected animals except humans by Galen in the second century, although not in the currently accepted sense; see translations by Duckworth (1962, pp. 181-222) and May (1968, pp. 31-32, 438-454). The traditional division into 12 cranial nerves is based on the work of Soemmerring (1778, pp. 173-180), who later called them cerebral nerves (Soemmerring, 1791, sections 128, 203-272); they were finally called the 12 cranial nerves by Longet (1842, vol. 2, p. 1).