The orthopragms of the spine : an essay on the curative mechanisms applicable to spinal curvature, exemplified by a typical collection lately presented to the Parkes' Museum of Hygiene, University College, London / by Robert Heather Bigg.

  • Bigg, Henry Robert Heather, 1853-1911.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The orthopragms of the spine : an essay on the curative mechanisms applicable to spinal curvature, exemplified by a typical collection lately presented to the Parkes' Museum of Hygiene, University College, London / by Robert Heather Bigg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    spine offers no exception to this rule. It serves as a tubular protection to the great nervous mainway of telegraphic communication existent through the body, it acts as a scaffolding on which to build the larger vital cavities, and along which to conduct the major vessels in their course to distribution, it permits a bodily pliancy conformable with the more extravagant actions of life, but all these uses that it has are secon- dary compared with its pre-eminent and primary func- tion of so regulating the relative position of the upper and lower extremes of the body that the status quo of the gravital centre may be in accordance with the principles above enunciated. In discharging this duty its consideration will, as in the case of any other piece of mechanism, fall under two heads, namely, the motor agent, including the generation and government of the force employed, and the structural scheme by which such force is con- verted and adapted to fulfil its purpose. This last is best taken first. The spine is composed of a number of mathemati- cally moulded and superimposed segments, between which there are nevertheless arrangements for the allowance of a sufficiency of motion to permit the column to bend in accordance with the necessities of life. These segments are combined and stayed against irregular or excessive movement by ligaments or cords, which for the most part are inextensible. The column is, moreover, curved in such a manner as to give the greatest and speediest facility for relative alterations of the position of the parts in its length.