The retrospective address in surgery, delivered at the eleventh anniversary meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Leeds, August 2nd and 3rd, 1843 / [William Hey].

  • Hey, William, 1796-1875.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The retrospective address in surgery, delivered at the eleventh anniversary meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Leeds, August 2nd and 3rd, 1843 / [William Hey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The question of the vascularity or non-vascularity of cartilages has been the subject of debate since the reading of the last address on surgery. Many eminent pathologists, amongst whom are Sir B. Brodie and Mr. Mayo, contend for their vascularity, and Mr. Liston has succeeded in demonstrating, by injection, the existence of vessels in the articular cartilage of several diseased joints ; on the other hand, Cruveilhier, Velpeau, and Key, espouse the doctrine of their non-vascularity, and Mr. Toynbee has made a series of very minute observations, which tend to confirm the truth of this doctrine : his injec¬ tions prove that the vessels which previous anatomists had traced up to the articular cartilages, and which they supposed to be continued into them, either as serous vessels or as red-blood vessels too minute for injection, actually terminate in veins without the limits of these tissues. Mr. Paget’s report does not touch upon this subject. There is, however, no absolute inconsistency between the observations of Mr. Liston and Mr. Toynbee ; for it must be recol¬ lected that those of the one were made on cartilage in its healthy, and of the other in its diseased state. It is not necessary that vessels should enter into car¬ tilage for the purpose of its nutrition, for it is now generally acknowledged that this process, in most animal tissues, consists in changes undergone by the nutrient liquor sanguinis which has exuded into them through the coats of the capillaries ramifying through them ; and as, in some structures which are not very vascular, the spaces between the capillaries are large, there is of necessity a considerable extent of tissue, which is nourished without being in contact with