A probationary essay on the causes and treatment of lateral curvature of the human spine : submitted by authority of the President and his Council, to the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh when candidate for admission to their boby / by Robert Knox.

  • Knox, Robert, 1791-1862.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A probationary essay on the causes and treatment of lateral curvature of the human spine : submitted by authority of the President and his Council, to the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh when candidate for admission to their boby / by Robert Knox. 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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    tarn motus instruments quern dorso ac spina anima- lia obeunt; quibus quinta ex abundanti accidit, viscerum ab anteriori parte spinas incumbentium mu- nimentum. In the healthy state, the vertebral column ought to incline neither to the right nor left, so that a ver- tical line would divide it into two equal parts. The head placed on its summit, is, by reason of the ho- rizon tality of its condyles, almost in aequilibrio,and re- quires of the muscles charged with sustaining it but a slight effort. As might be expected, it is quite the reverse with other animals, which, from their prone, and more or less quadruped form, have the head suspended, as it were, to the anterior extremity of the column. In man who is naturally erect, the weight of the head, arms, chest, and many of the abdominal viscera, is supported by the spine in a line perpendicular with the ground, and with a pressure increasing from the atlas downwards to the sacrum and pelvis: in quadrupeds, for a very ob- vious reason, nothing of all this takes place. Hence it happens, that, whilst in man the spine may be distorted, and even twisted by its own weight, and by that of the head and thorax, and forced to de- viate from its naturally straight and upright form, either laterally, posteriorly, or anteriorly, other ani- mals are subject only to a curvature of the spine