Researches tending to prove the non-vascularity and the peculiar uniform mode of organization and nutrition of certain animal tissues : viz. articular cartilage, and the cartilage of the different classes of fibro-cartilage; the cornea, the crystalline lens, and the vitreous humour; and the epidermoid appendages / by Joseph Toynbee.

  • Toynbee, Joseph, 1815-1866.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches tending to prove the non-vascularity and the peculiar uniform mode of organization and nutrition of certain animal tissues : viz. articular cartilage, and the cartilage of the different classes of fibro-cartilage; the cornea, the crystalline lens, and the vitreous humour; and the epidermoid appendages / by Joseph Toynbee. 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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    which, in childhood and during- adult age, owing to the functions of the joints, they are necessarily absent. At the period when the child begins to use the various joints, and subjects them to pressure, these vessels recede ; and in adult life they are only found on that margin of articular cartilage which is exempt from the influence of external forces*. The arteries which pass between the articular cartilage and the synovial membrane, like those of the foetus, may be considered as the termination of the articular arteries. At the point where the reflexed becomes continuous with the articular synovial membrane, it contains large vessels subjacent to it, which are numerous and plexiform. Immediately, however, that they enter the cellular web, between the articular cartilage and synovial membrane, they become enlarged and straight, and pass to a greater or less distance over the border of the articular car- tilage, forming loops frequently with considerable dilatations, and becoming finally continuous with the veins. The free surface of adult articular cartilage appears to be nourished by the liquor sanguinis, which exudes from these looped and dilated vessels. The following are the leading facts which the preceding researches upon Articular Cartilage tend to establish :— 1. Epiphysal and articular cartilage are developed and nourished in the early periods of foetal existence, without the presence of blood-vessels in the substance of the former, or on the surface of the latter. 2. At subsequent periods, canals are formed in the epiphysal cartilage, vessels are prolonged into them, which converge towards the articular cartilage ; and also vessels extend over a considerable portion of the free surface of articular cartilage. 3. At later periods, the epiphysal cartilage ossifies, and for a considerable time vessels are placed between the ossified nucleus and the articular cartilage. 4. As age advances, the osseous nucleus increases in size, the blood-vessels disap- pear from the cartilage which remains unossified, but the nucleus contains large and numerous blood-vessels. 5. Corresponding with the changes just noticed, is the recession of the blood- vessels from the whole of that surface of the articular cartilage which is subject to compression. 6. In adult life, the articular cartilage contains no blood-vessels ; but in the can- celli of the bone at its attached surface, are numerous large vessels, from which the cartilage is separated by a delicate lamella of bone ; the circumference of its free surface presents numerous dilated blood-vessels. 7. Articular cartilage during the whole of life gradually becomes thinner, by being converted into bone. * I shall take another opportunity of discussing the pathological conditions in which, in the adult subject, these vessels extend over nearly the whole of the surface of the articular cartilage; artificial injections of them may be seen in most pathological museums. 2 A 2