Treatise on diseases of the bones / by Edward Stanley.

  • Stanley, Edward, 1793-1862.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on diseases of the bones / by Edward Stanley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    INTRODUCTION. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DISEASES OF BONE It is probable that Jean Louis Petit, in his Treatise on the Diseases of the Bones, first observed the analogy in their morbid changes to those of the soft parts of the body. Mr. Hunter, adopting the same view of the subject, represents the bones in the causes of many of their diseases, in the termination of them and in their restoration, as similar to the soft parts.* Mr. Abernethy, following out the same doctrine, referred to the phenomena which bone presents in disease as the proof of its vital organization.! Experience has proved the correct- ness of these views, and, accordingly, they are made the foundation of the following Treatise. Although it is true, that the diseases of bone are analogous to those of soft parts, yet they have their peculiar characters ; for in bone, as in other tissues, the rule holds that diseases are modified by the struc- ture and vital properties of the part they attack. Diseases of bone are generally characterized by slowness of progress. And it is equally so, whether the process tends to the advance or the recession of disease. Thus the exfoliation of the smallest piece of dead bone often requires many months for its completion ; and a much longer time is required for the osseous union or anchylosis of the sur- faces of bone, which, in the progress of disease in the spine, or in a * Lectures. t Lectures.