Observations on the development and nutrition of bone and cartilage, and on the relations of connective tissues to each other in health and disease / by Professor Redfern.

  • Redfern (Professor)
Date:
[1897?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the development and nutrition of bone and cartilage, and on the relations of connective tissues to each other in health and disease / by Professor Redfern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    6/19 (page 98)
    ones are often very difficult to open, because of changes of structure producing cartilaginous, fibrous, calcareous, or bony anchylosis. On tearing open such joints, which often requires great force, the opposed cartilages are seen to be the seat of changes in their cells and hyaline substance, which, with inter- mixture of the elements of the opposed surfaces, and a change of them into a firmer form of connective tissue, explains why they cohere so firmly. On such surfaces numerous bloody points are often seen. These are the ends of torn blood-vessels which have been formed in the new tissue into which parts of the cartilage have been converted. Mr Listen, in the xxiii* vol. of the Med.-Chirurgical Transac- tions, described and gave a drawing of loops of blood-vessels which he had injected, and which he looked upon as indicating the vascularisation of cartilage. After the injection of the vessels of such amputated limbs as those to which I have just referred, I found abundant loopings of blood-vessels in the deeper parts of the cartilages. But instead of such vessels being in contact with the cartilage, they are formed in the midst of medullary matter produced out of the cartilage by proliferation of its cells. The changed action of the non- vascular cartilage has transformed it into a vascular cellular or medullary mass, destined for further changes. In many parts of such joints the uniting matter of the opposed cartilages is fibro-cartilage, in which, as well as in the deeper parts of the hyaline cartilage, calcification leads to the formation of primary bone, and subsequently to the true laminated bone of bony anchylosis. Thus it appears that when an altered and healthy nutritive action can be secured in a diseased joint, it is possible that perfect bony anchylosis may happen by indirect transformation of the articular cartilage into bone,—a much more advantageous result than the very rare union of bones deprived altogether of their articular surfaces by the destructive action of disease, and no longer held firmly in contact by the ligaments, which are then too long for their purpose. The suspension of the increase in length of long bones by ossification at the line of junction of temporary and permanent