The palatal rugæ in man / by Harrison Allen.

  • Allen, Harrison, 1841-1897.
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The palatal rugæ in man / by Harrison Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    tions (if indeed they may be said to have any at all) on the general physiological laws operating in all the tissue changes of the body. What was • once morbid is now natural. If the word is to be retained by naturalists, it should have a strictly medical application —the one originally designed for it by practical men. THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE RUGJE AND THE INTERIOR OF THE NOSE. I have met with ten examples in which the left side of the nose was smaller than the right and in which the same side of the hard palate was also the smaller. Care must be taken to distinguish the common variety of narrowing of the nose by a deflection of the septum from the much rarer form or reduction of the chambers in all directions. In six cases the right side of the nasal chamber was the larger and a corresponding increase in size of the right half of the palate was detected. But the association between palatal and nasal conditions is by no means uniform and at the same time I cannot conclude that the cases brought forward in evidence were coincidences. I have stud- ies of individual cases in which not only was harmony present between the proportions of the nose and the hard palate but between these structures and the cranium as well. It may be said that, in a manner, the law of symmetry is not with- out exemplifications in the harmonies of the arrangement of the sides of the hard palate, Avith the nasal chambers and with the cor- responding side of the head but that this exemplification is subject to so many exceptions by the operation of minor disturbing factors as to be rarely present. In examples of hyperostosis of the inter-maxillery suture the in- ferior turbinated bones are high and apparently compressed. This condition is often associated with imperfect development of the vomer at the choana. The same peculiarity is found in high V-shaped vaults. A well defined group of subjects exhibit intumescent states of the membranes of the premaxillary portion of the nasal chamber, a rounded nodule projecting from the floor of the vestibule, a prom- inent anterior end of the inferior turbinated bone, and a tumid state of the membrane covering the septum. While such pronounced morbid appearances are seen in the front of the chamber the remain- der of the nasal surface is perfectly healthy. Coincident with these