Osteotomy and osteoclasis for deformities of the lower extremities / By Charles T. Poore.

  • Poore, Charles T.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Osteotomy and osteoclasis for deformities of the lower extremities / By Charles T. Poore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    titioner, in order that its results, in deformities of the long bones and changes in the shape of the chest and pelvis, may be prevented. Kickets is not a dis- ease of the bone alone, but is a constitutional affec- tion, attacking the osseous structures in common with every other tissue of the body. It is essentially a disease of malnutrition. It may be congenital, but it usually first manifests itself in children from six months to three years of age. Bad air, improper food, and scanty clothing are its most prolific causes. Any child may become rickety, no matter how healthy it may have been at birth, if placed under any condi- tion that interferes with its assimilative powers. It may be laid down as a rule that a healthy child, fed on good mother's milk, will never develop this dis- ease. It is equally true that not every child who suffers from malnutrition will become rickety. Its beginning is insidious, with the ordinary symptoms of improper digestion. The little patient may be plump, but its muscles are flabby and its complexion pale and unhealthy ; large veins are distinctly seen through the pasty-looking skin. The bowels may be loose or confined, more often capricious, a day or two relaxed, then followed by a period of constipation; the stools are white, curdy-looking, and extremely offensive; the food is often passed through the ali- mentary canal undigested. Accompanying this de- rangement of the digestive apparatus there is profuse sweating of the head, neck, and upper part of the chest, worse at night. The moisture will be seen standing in large drops upon the forehead, and often runs down the face, and at night the pillow is drenched with it. While the head and neck are thus