On the thickness of the articular cartilages at different periods of life in the human subject / by P. Redfern.

  • Redfern, Peter, 1821-1912
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the thickness of the articular cartilages at different periods of life in the human subject / by P. Redfern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    amount of elasticity, and their adaptation to the uses of the parts of the body to which they belong, it would be of great importance to know precisely what changes take place in them as life advances. We know that the bones and muscles of the aged person are very different from those of the young adult, and it might be expected that the cartilages would also be found changed, or, if they should not be so, we should look for some cause for this exemption in the case of tissues made use of for the same general purposes as the bones and muscles, and intended to harmonise with them in their action. But if the assumed diminution in the thickness of articular carti¬ lage with advancing age, be made use of as an argument in illus¬ tration of the nature of changes which take place in another texture, in the development of bone, it becomes doubly important to deter¬ mine what grounds there are for the assumption which is thus founded on, lest another investigation be complicated by the intro¬ duction of erroneous data, which must be shown to be such before any considerable progress can be made. Let us first examine the statement itself, and the authority on which it is founded ; secondly, What use has been made of it in the study of the development of bone ; and, lastly, The results of actual measurements of the thickness of articular cartilages at different ages, in a great number of instances. Mr Toynbee, in his admirable paper u On the Organisation and Nutrition of Non-vascular Animal Tissues,” read before the Boyal Society, and published in the Philosophical Transactions,1 says :— u The articular cartilage.is gradually being converted into bone during the whole of life ; thus, it is thicker in young than in old subjects, and, as Sir Benjamin Brodie informs me, it is much thinner in old age than in the adult; in fact, it is not very rare to find that the articular cartilage of the head of the os femoris, in many old persons, has completely disappeared—a change which is probably to be attributed to its entire ossification. In a note, Mr Toynbee adds :—u This appears to be another of the many instances of the disappearance of the animal, and the increased deposit of the earthy, constituents of the body in old age.” And again, as one of seven leading facts which Mr Toynbee believes that his researches tend to establish, he gives the following :2—u Articular cartilage, during the whole of life, gradually becomes thinner, by being con¬ verted into bone.” Dr Carpenter, after speaking of the normal proportion in the length of a bone being almost wholly acquired by the growth of the cartilage between the shaft and the epiphysis, says :3—u What further increase it gains seems chiefly, if not entirely, due to the progressive ossification of the articular cartilage covering the ex- 1 Philosophical Transactions for 1841, Part I. p. 167. 2 Ibid, p. 173. 3 Principles of Human Phvsiologv, Lond. 1846, 3d edit., p. 151 ; and 4th edit. Lond. 1853, p. 266.
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