The movements of the ankle-joint / by W. Arbuthnot Lane.

  • Lane, William Arbuthnot, 1856-1943.
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The movements of the ankle-joint / by W. Arbuthnot Lane. 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.

    18/18 (page 422)
    Much of the error into which anatomical and surgical text- books have fallen with regard to the movements permitted in the ankle-joint of the vigorous adult subject is due also to the great freedom with which the foot may be adducted or abducted upon the astragalus when the ankle-joint is extended, and to the inability to perform this movement when the ankle-joint is forcibly flexed. The reason is that in the latter case the astra- galus is fixed, and the astragalo-scaphoid capsule and the plantar ligaments are rendered extremely tense by the force exerted in forcibly flexing the ankle-joint, and it is therefore impossible to adduct or abduct the foot in the manner I have described in the Guy’s Hospital Reports, 1887, and to which I would refer for full particulars. I would also call attention here to another contribu- tion contained in the same volume of the Reports ( “ An Unde- scribed Fracture of the Lower End of the Tibia or Fibula, or of Both Bones, which cannot be recognised during lifetime”). In it I showed that excessive rotation of the astragalus in a horizontal plane might produce fracture of one or both bones of the leg, the bones yielding rather than the ligaments which are attached to them. In the large majority of cases the fragments presented no displacement whatever. The reason of this is obvious, if the seat of the fracture or fractures be carefully observed.