A remarkable example of the manner in which pressure-changes in the skeleton may reveal the labour-history of the individual / by W. Arbuthnot Lane.

  • Lane, William Arbuthnot, 1856-1943.
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A remarkable example of the manner in which pressure-changes in the skeleton may reveal the labour-history of the individual / by W. Arbuthnot Lane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    membrane. They served to transmit pressure during certain movements of the hip-joint, but not with sufficient frequency to necessitate their being covered with artioular cartilage. The posterior surface of the extended articular surface of the head ended abruptly by a free margin, which was separated by a considerable interval from the surface of the neck. The acetabular cavity was increased in depth by the deposit of bone and articular cartilage upon its margin. This process had been a very gradual one, as the cotyloid ligament was not in the slightest degree separated from the margin of the cavity. A small interval existed between the back part of the head of the femur and the lower part of the acetabular cavity. This gap, which varied in extent with the various movements of the joint, was occupied by a large movable crescentic fibrous mass, whose surfaces were covered by synovial membrane, whose thick base was attached to and continuous with the cotyloid ligament, and whose free margin consisted of innumerable branched pro- cesses of ligament. It was practically identical in structure with the branched processes of synovial membrane already alluded to, and a little consideration will show that it developed in the same manner, and served a similar purpose. As in the case of the interarticular fibro-cartilages in the knee- joint, it was not fixed, but accommodated itself to the varying movements of the head. The head of the left femur showed but slight changes, and these were such as are usually present under the circumstances. I will not describe its condition further, as I am merely making use of the case with the object of illustrating the fact that the synovial and ligamentous fringes, like the additamentary hones, exist to perfoimi certain useful functions as much as do any of the structures making up the original aHiculation. I will take this opportunity to correct three printer’s errors, which I have observed in the last page of a paper entitled “ Some Variations in the Human Skeleton,” in this Journal, 1885, p. 404. In two oases the conjugate of the brain is described, instead of the conjugate of the brim of the pelvis, and in the ninth line from the bottom, the trans- verse diameter of the brim is described as being 8£ inches instead of 5.