A probationary essay on necrosis : submitted ... to the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh when candidate for admission ... / by Archibald Douglas.

  • Douglas, Archibald.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A probationary essay on necrosis : submitted ... to the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh when candidate for admission ... / by Archibald Douglas. 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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    terminated happily. Nor do later experiments sup- port the above view, as pieces of the periosteum have been again and again removed from the bones of the inferior animals without having been followed by any such effects. The length and the depth of the bone necrosed will depend upon the extent and the force of the injury applied, and also upon the part of the bone injured. W hen a portion of the bone is alone affected, the ne- ciosis is not confined to the part injured ; it is always of a very irregular shape, and generally has at its ex- tremity long rounded spiculae. The separation of the dead part takes place by a piocess of the living system termed ulcerative ab- sorption. It takes place exactly at the place where the dead portion terminates, and is analogous to the separation of a slough in the soft parts of the body; but in this (the osseous tissue) the process requires a much longer time to be completed. A number of ingenious theories have been pro- pounded to explain this process, of which two may be mentioned* The first was advocated by Boyer and others, that this separation was accomplished by means of fleshy granulations shooting in between the dead and living part, and acting like a wedge, thus forcing it off. But Weidmann has shewn that this cannot take place at first, the parts being in such intimate