Contributions to teratology : undescribed malformation of the lower lip occurring in four members of one family / by J. Jardine Murray.

  • Murray, John Jardine.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to teratology : undescribed malformation of the lower lip occurring in four members of one family / by J. Jardine Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    CONTRIBUTIONS TO TERATOLOGY Haying lately found in four members of one family instances of a singular malformation of the lower lip, which does not seem to have been alluded to by any writer on teratology, I purpose in this paper first, to describe the malformation, and then to consider the various possible explanations which might account for its occurrence. And as in the same family there are other important defects of formation, which, viewed collectively and in their relations to each other, afford in- teresting illustrations of the fundamental laws of teratology, I shall notice the individual peculiarities in the order in which they came under my observation. In May, 1859, Dr. Thomson, Physician to the Royal Maternity Hospital of Edinburgh, requested me to see J. H., whose parents were anxious that he should immediately undergo an operation for the cure of hare-lip. The little patient was a well-developed and vigorous child, aged eighteen months. The fissure in the lip was confined to the left side,* but extended quite into the nostril; and on this side, also, the anterior part of the hard palate was cleft from want of union between the intermaxillary bone and the left superior maxilla. The intermaxillary bone was twisted on itself, so that the incisor teeth were placed at an angle with the line of their ordinary direction, and partly bridged over the gap in the alveolar ridge. This twisting caused the portion of the alveolar ridge formed by the intermaxillary bone to overlap that portion formed by the inferior maxilla. The * It is worthy of remark, that Nelaton, Chelius, Fergusson, and others, have observed that in cases of single hare-lip the cleft is usually on the left side. “ Vices of formation,” such as hare-lip, are properly instances of arrested development, due in the great majority of cases to insufficient formative power in the embryo; and it has been asserted by Otto and others that the left side of the body is not only more frequently the subject of mal- formations, but that, being weaker, it is also more prone to disease than the right side.