On the diseases of the hip-joint / By William Coulson.

  • Coulson, William, 1802-1877.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the diseases of the hip-joint / By William Coulson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/158 (page 5)
    The strength of the hip-joint is very great, depending on the depth of the acetabulum, the contraction of the cotyloid ligament, around the head of the os femoris, and the thickness and firmness of the capsular ligament. The joint is further strengthened by the muscles surrounding it, particularly by the psoas magnus, iliacus internus, gluteus-minimus, and the external rotators. The neck of the thigh-bone has already been described as situated externally and inferiorly to the head, and consequently internally and superiorly to the upper end of the bone, with which it generally makes an angle of about forty-eight or fifty degrees, though in some subjects the direction of the neck is almost trans- verse, or at right angles with the body of the bone. The angle formed by the neck varies according to the sex and the period of life : thus it is less obtuse in the female than in the male, and in old age it is often quite a right angle, and the neck is both depressed and shortened. The thigh-bone does not stand quite in a vertical direction ; but it is inclined a little obliquely, so that the upper ends of the two thigh-bones are at a greater distance from each other than the lower ones, while these, when we stand erect, are placed very near each other. Owing to this obliquity of the bones, room is left between them, at the upper part, for the large and powerful muscles of adduction, as well as for the external organs of generation, and the outlets of the rectum and bladder. The obliquity of the two thigh-bones, it has been rightly observed, allows walking to be performed in less room, straighter, and quicker; for if they had extended perpendicularly downward from the pelvis, the knees being then at a greater distance from