Mollities ossium : (malakosteon, osteo-malacia, osteo-sarcosis, Knochen-Erweichung, rachitismus adultorum, rickets, or softening of the bones in the adult) / by Joseph Jones.

  • Jones, Joseph, 1833-1896.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mollities ossium : (malakosteon, osteo-malacia, osteo-sarcosis, Knochen-Erweichung, rachitismus adultorum, rickets, or softening of the bones in the adult) / by Joseph Jones. 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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    digestion is ill performed, in whicli case lactic acid may be an abundant product in the system. 3. Rickets and mollities ossium, therefore, are not essentially diseases of the bones, but seem to be the result of imperfect diges- tion or nutrition; to improve which is consequently our first indication. None of the substances readily converted into lactic acid should be taken, as sugar, starch, gum, etc., nor even milk (rickets are often the consequence of children having been too long suckled), but animal food and such other as is freely digestible, should be. chosen, in aid of which we ought to employ such medicines as may restore the general tone of the system. This chemical theory of Marchand is sustained by the discovery of increased quantities of lactic acid and lactates in the urine of rickets and mollities ossium; and by the actual discovery of lactic acid in the diseased bones of the latter disease. C. Schmidt proved clearly that free lactic acid was present in the fluid of the cylindrical bones in this disease; and Lehmann states that the fluid occurring in these bones exhibits very often, al- though not invariably, an acid reaction. Weber, who alone appears to have investigated the composition of the phosphate of lime con- tained in these bones, found in addition to carbonate of lime § basic phosphate of lime, and believes that phosphate of normal bone (3CaO,POs) is converted by means of the free acid into this less basic salt. The singular and painful disease of the jaw-bones, produced by the fumes of phosphorus and phosphoric acid,1 renders it probable that in mollities ossium, most of the pain and irritation of the bones may be caused by the liberation of phosphoric acid in the phos- phate of lime which has been subjected to the action of the Jiee lactic acid. « For an interesting account of the Diseases of Workmen engaged in making Lucifer Matches, see American Journal of the Medical Sciences; Oct. 1S4G, N. S. vol. xii. p. 525.