Volume 1

Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  • Royal College of Surgeons of England. Museum.
Date:
1846-9
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 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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    of the blood, which again may be the results of defect or error in any of the great chain of processes ministering to the formation of blood, and the main- tenance of it in purity; or, in certain cases, it may be the result of a disturbance of the direct influence which the nervous system appears, at least in the higher animals, to exercise upon nutrition ; and in some instances it ensues where it seems impossible at present to assign it to any known cause. But, it is to be observed, that the condition of which the atrophy of a part is the con- sequence does not always determine the form in which that atrophy will be manifested; thus, in old age the nutrition of nearly all parts is defective, but the defect appears in some persons in the form of emaciation, with comparatively little change of texture, while in others there is fatty degeneration of the several tissues and organs, with little diminution of their bulk, or with even an increase of it by the accumulation of fat. And so in more local atrophy, as, for example, that which follows paralysis of a limb, there is in some cases a mere wasting of the parts, and in others they become little if at all smaller, but in place of their natural texture abundant fat is formed. The specimens included in this series are selected to show atrophy uncompli- cated by other coincident morbid changes. In the following series illustrating special pathology many others of like kind will be found, and, besides these, many more in which the atrophy of a part is accompanied by some other morbid change of structure by which its results are modified or nearly hidden. Such specimens may be found most numerously among those of diseases of bone. 7. The metatarsal bone of a great toe and the metacarpal bone of a thumb, in which atrophy has reduced the compact wall to a thin, flexible, and fragile, nearly film-like layer, which is in many places perforated by minute apertures, and about the articular ends is partly deficient, partly broken away. The cancellous tissue has wide spaces bounded by very slender bony threads and lamellse. The whole texture is light and dry, Avithout an appearance of oily substance. Presented hy Charles Deene Steel, Esq. They were part of a large collection of various bones from Malta, all similarly diseased; many presented at their articular surfaces the marks of hardening and polishing after the removal of their cartilages. 8. The skull of an old edentulous person. Together with a general diminution in the thickness and weight, and probably also in the size, of all the bones