The Musculous flesh wherewith the Back-bone is covered being removed, its admirable figure is easily discerned, which is partly streight and partly oblique, somtimes bending inward and sometimes outward, which Hippocrates first discovered, and Duretus, Hippocrates his Ghost has described in Coacis.

Every where between two vertebras, a thick cartilage is placed in the middle like glue. Galen in his Booke de Ossibus, writes that it is an hard and in some sort Gristlie Ligament.

All the vertebrae or turning Joynts of the Back, are covered on the outside with an hard membrane; and within they have a strong membranous ligament, drawen a long from the highest vertebra as low as to the Os sacrum, which is there placed and wrapped about (besides two other membranes) to defend and preserve the spinal Marrow.

I have often found in bodies that were hanged and burnt, and have been informed by the Executioner, that it is a ridiculous fable, which the Cabalists relate of a certaine Vertebra, viz. that in the Back is found a certaine Vertebra which they have termed Luz. out of which as from a seed, the Bones shal be regenerated and spring up at the General Resurrection. This Bone Luz so called, Cornelius Agrippa and Vesalius wil have to be in the foote.

Howbeit Hieronymus Magius in his fift Book de Exustione Mundi, relates that Adrianus learned experimentally of Rabbi Joshua Ben Anime, that the foresaid Bone is one of the Vertebra’s of the Back.

For he found in the Back bone, one bone that a milstone turning upon it would not breake, the fire could not burne it, the water would not dissolve it, and at last being layed upon an Anvil and smitten with a sledge or smiths-hammer, it was so far from being broken in the least, that the Anvil was crackt and the sledge broken the Bone receiveing in the meane while no detriment. Which is as false as false can be. For all the Vertebrae, may be broken in peices, burnt and reduced to ashes.

The word luz in Hebrew and Aramaic literally means nut or almond. Perhaps because of its shape, it came to be associated with the coccyx. The belief that this bone was indestructible and would give rise to the resurrection of the dead is reflected in Psalms 34:21. The traditional translation of this verse is “he protects all his bones; not one of them is broken.” However, a variant translation pertinent to the theme of immortality reads “one of his bones is not broken,” that is, is indestructible … We are greatly indebted to various embryologists for many basic scientific contributions. Their studies demonstrated that the coccyx contains the vestige of the primitive neural tube. Moreover, the sacrococcygeal area is a common site for teratomas, abnormal embryos in a sense.