Report on the clinic for diseases of children : held in the New York Medical College session 1860-61 : with essays on some of the more important points of infantile therapeutics / by A. Jacobi.

  • Jacobi, A. (Abraham), 1830-1919.
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the clinic for diseases of children : held in the New York Medical College session 1860-61 : with essays on some of the more important points of infantile therapeutics / by A. Jacobi. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    bones, craniotabes, has really been present, cannot be determined upon; at all events, the bones of the posterior part of the cranium, iu which craniotabes is always seen, appear more normal than the rest. After the period of rhachitic, spongy thickening, and consequent mollification, osteoporosis was followed by the stage of rhachitic eburneation. During this period the peculiar osseous cells became more numerous, the layers of the osseous tissue that separated from each other during mollification filling up with them, and the canaliculi got thinner. In the physiological condition, the inner lamina of the boties is said to stop vegetating after the tenth year; and the dura mater does not form uew layers before the regressive period of cerebral development takes its commencement, in advanced years. After the fiftieth or sixtieth year of life, absorption begins to lose in power, the brain gets smaller, the veins narrower, arteries wider. If this development takes place in early life, the case is, like that before us, without injury to the cerebral functions when the external layer only is affected, but with decided troubles of the cerebral functions, resulting in spasms, neural- gias, paralysis, or idiotism, when the process.takes place on the inner lamina. The case before us is well illustrated by the investigations laid down by Prof. Huschke, of Jena, iu his last work on Craniosclerosis Tota- lis Rhachitica. Undoubtedly this case does uot compare in import- ance with that published by Prof. H., but the best-developed cases will always do most in illustrating the whole class. The case of total osteosclerosis described by H. is that of a girl of seventeen years of age, whose skull (the normal weight being GOO grammes) weighed as much as 4,117 grammes. The microscope showed that the medullary (Havers') canaliculi were large, and very numerous on the surface, narrow and very few in the interior of the sclerotic bones, and that the osseous canaliculi were more spherical and irregular in site and shape. The chemical composition was also ab- normal, the constituents being phosphate of lime, 65.59; carbonate of lime, 11.12; sulphate of magnesia, 1.14; cartilage, very little fat, etc., 22.15. No fiuorate of lime was found. After all, the bones, taken aa a whole, proved exceedingly solid, but fragile; when tried in small pieces, very white in their interior, but yellowish on their surface; the latter color being the relic of extravasated blood or other pigmeutous matter. Another skull, in the possession of the author, and appa- rently only in the beginning of sclerotic development, weighed, inferior maxilla excluded, 1,015 grammes; and a third, in the museum of the University of Jena, of the same description, is that of a young baboon, 2