Rickets, its treatment by osteotomy : a clinical lecture delivered at Bellevue Hospital / by Frederic S. Dennis ; reported by Thomas McCann ; and revised by the author for Gaillard's Medical Journal.

  • Dennis, Frederic S. (Frederic Shepard), 1850-1934.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rickets, its treatment by osteotomy : a clinical lecture delivered at Bellevue Hospital / by Frederic S. Dennis ; reported by Thomas McCann ; and revised by the author for Gaillard's Medical Journal. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from Gaillard'b MnnicAi. Journal, March, 1847, Rickets, Its Treatment by Osteotomy. A Clinical Lecture Delivered at Bellevue Hospital By FREDERIC S. DENNIS, M.D., New York, Professor of the Principles and Practice of Surgery in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, Attending Surgeon to Bellevue and St. Vincent Hospitals. Reported by THOMAS McCANN, Jr., Junior Assistant Bellevue Hospital, and revised by the author for Gaillard's Medical Journal. Gentlemen: In the clinic to-day I propose to discuss a subject which at present occupies a good deal of attention among hospital surgeons. It is a subject, I may add, that is not considered in detail in any of our standard text-books upon surgery. A mere reference to the operation is found in the recent surgical works. The description of the operation and the results are to be found only in medical journals or in special monographs, devoted to a consideration of the subject. I have here in this clinic to-day a number of cases to illustrate the varieties of rachitic deformity for which osteotomy is performed, and I shall avail myself of this opportunity to discuss the subject in all of its details. Rachitis is a developmental disease, which impairs the nutrition of the body. Every organ and every viscus is affected by it. Rickets is a disease essentially of childhood ; but in rare cases the deformity of rickets is manifested in the adult. Without entering upon an argument as to whether it is possible for rickets to occur in the adult, I shall ask you to accept this statement, as pathologists have not as yet given us any description of a disease with the characteristic features of rickets to explain the deformity in the bones of the adult. Until a disease is described to account for the few rare cases of rachitic deformity which occur in adults, it is better to assume that rachitis, or at least a disease closely allied to it, exists in adults and that this d.sease is the common factor in producing the deformity in the young and the old. The word rachitis is derived from a Saxon word