Pathological and surgical observations on diseases of the joints / Benjamin Collins Brodie.

  • Brodie, Benjamin, Sir, 1783-1862.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathological and surgical observations on diseases of the joints / Benjamin Collins Brodie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    on a diseased action occurring in the ligaments; and there can be no doubt that the long-con- tinued symptoms, which occasionally follow a severe sprain, depend on these same parts being in a state of slow inflammation, in consequence of some of their fibres having been ruptured, or over-stretched. I cannot say that I have never seen a case where disease, independently of these causes, has originated in the ligaments; but I certainly have never met with a case where it has been proved to have done so by dissection ; and it may be safely asserted, that this is a rare occurrence, and not what happens in the ordinary diseases to which the joints are liable. On the other hand, no part of the body is much more frequently diseased than the synovial membranes. This is what their anatomical structure and functions might lead us to expect, since we find that living organs are more subject to have their natural functions deranged, in pro- portion as they are more vascular, and as they are employed in a greater degree in the process of secretion. The synovial membranes of the joints have not been well described by the majority of the old, nor even of modern, anatomists. A suffi- ciently accurate account of them, however, has been published by Dr. W. Hunter, in a commu- nication to the Royal Society on the structure of cartilage, published in the forty-second vo- lume of the Philosophical Transactions, and since then by M. Bichat, in his Trait6 des Membranes ;