Rickets, including osteomalacia and tetany / by Alfred F. Hess.

  • Hess, Alfred F., 1875-1933.
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Rickets, including osteomalacia and tetany / by Alfred F. Hess. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    legs and lower parts wain too little. A woman in the west hath happily, healed many, by cauterizing the vein behind the ear.” We now come to Glisson's work which “will always remain one of the glories of English medicine.” This treatise was published in Latin in 1050 with the' imprimatur of the Censors of the College of Physicians and was entitled “De Raehitide sice Morbo I’uerili (pii vulgo The Rickets dicitur,” a title which calls to mind that of Whistler’s essay. It was prepared by a committee of three ap¬ pointed by the college, the two other members being Dr. Bate and Dr. Regemorter. At first seven other Fellows of the Royal College collaborated in its composition, later three of this number were appointed a committee, but finally (ilisson’s knowledge and activity became so overshadowing, that the others “committed the whole work to be woven by him alone,” fearing that otherwise the treatise “should arise deformed, misshapen and heterogeneous.” d'he purpose was to investigate a disorder which had made its appearance some thirty years previously in the counties of Dorset and Somerset. A year later the work appeared in English, in a translation made by Phil. Arinin; Dick states that two practically identical editions were published in London during this year. In HiGO a second edition was issued in London, ddie third edition, published in Leyden in 1(>71, has the well-known title page, which we have reproduced, portraying a rachitic patient in a physician’s examining room; on the wall may be seen a scoliotic vertebral column and a bowed femur. Francis Glisson was born in Dorsetshire in 1597 and died in London in 1077. He graduated from Cains College, Cambridge, and was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. For over thirty years he was Regius Professor of Physic at ( ant- bridge, but also lectured on anatomy which included normal and pathological anatomy—at the Royal College of Physicians in London. He was also an orthopedic surgeon of distinction; in fact, it seems quite possible that his attention was directed to rickets through an interest in the deformities which this disorder occasioned. The Glisson sling, which he devised, has been copied and variously modified by modern orthopedic surgeons. Ilis book on the .1 na- tnnia llcpatis, remembered especially for its description of the liver capsule, which still bears his name, indicates both the breadth and the precision of his intellect. In the opinion of Boerhaave he was the most exact of all anatomists. In addition to his academic duties he practiced medicine in Colchester, where lie lived for many years. In the wide scope of iiis activities, which call to mind the versatility of the artists of the Renaissance, Ik* may be compared to Thomas Willis who occupied the chair of Natural Philosophy in Oxford at that time and was not only an anatomist of distinction, but one o! the foremost clinicians of his day. It was the period of