Syndesmologia, or, A description of the ligaments of the human body / by Josias Weitbrecht ; translated by a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland [Robert Harrison].

  • Weitbrecht, Josias.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Syndesmologia, or, A description of the ligaments of the human body / by Josias Weitbrecht ; translated by a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland [Robert Harrison]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    force, and well calculated for retaining two, or more, separate bodies in their proper relative situation. Li- gament differs from every other animal substance; its elasticity and flexibility distinguish it from bone; its fibrous texture from cartilage; its colour from muscle; its density and homogeneous structure from tendon ; its origin, state of tension, and use, from nerve ; and its solidity from the sanguineous tubes and other vessels. The older anatomists have been at much trouble to define the Nature of ligament, and have described it as a substance formed of similar particles, cold and dry, a structure intermediate between nerve and carti- lage, forced, as it were, by heat out of the crassamen- tum, or the lenta portione seminis: but such vague explanations are only calculated to excite useless dis- cussion, on questions which have been already agitated in the schools of Aristotle and of Galen, and without con- ferring any benefit on science, or adding to it any really useful knowledge. Vesalius, more prudently abstain- ing from such disputes, has by experiment established one difference at least to exist between ligament and tendon, namely, that the latter when immersed in boiling water becomes swoln, and changed into a gelatinous mass much sooner than the former, which, when similarly treated, has the power of retaining for a long time its tenacity and fibrous appearance, and even if submitted to a stronger heat, will yield no further product, unless that by decomposition it becomes re- solved into the elements of animal matter. We rank under the head of ligaments; 1st, That ap- paratus which connects the articulating ends of bones and cartilages, by which they are all united into one admirable structure, the individual parts of which are linnly maintained in such particular relative situations,