On cervical ribs : with example in living subject / by David Wallace.

  • Wallace, David, Sir, 1862-1952.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On cervical ribs : with example in living subject / by David Wallace. 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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    Jtrw >1 ON CERVICAL RIBS, WITH EXAMPLE IN LIVING SUBJECT. By DAVID WALLACE, F.R.C.S. Ed. (Read before the Medico- Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, 2nd December 1891; and reprinted from the Edinburgh Medical Journal for February 1892.) The occurrence of cervical ribs in man is, I think, of sufficient rarity to justify me in laying before this Society a short note upon them from an anatomical point of view, before showing a patient who presents the peculiarity. Apart from variations in shape, anatomically three variations in ribs are specially referred to by anatomists, viz.,—(1) Rudimentary, (2) Bicipital, and (3) Super- numerary. The rudimentary and bicipital varieties are of less interest to the surgeon than the supernumerary; so I may dismiss them by merely stating that the highest and lowest ribs are apt to occur in an imperfectly formed condition, sometimes the first and sometimes the twelfth being so small as to represent, as said by Professor Struthers,1 the rib shrinking into the transverse process of the dorsal vertebra, just as the supernumerary cervical rib may be said to represent the anterior tubercle of the transverse process expanded into a rib. Professor Turner,2 writing of the bicipital rib, says,—“ The anatomical peculiarity is not due to a bifurcation of the shaft of a single rib at its vertebral end into two heads, but to the fusion of what should have been the shafts of two distinct ribs into a common body. It invariably occurs at the apex of the thorax.” Supernumerary ribs occur as an addition on the seventh cervical 1 Vide Anatomical and Physiological Observations, by Professor Struthers 1854. 2 Vide Journal of An at. and Rhys., vol. xvii.