A probationary essay on necrosis : submitted by the authority of the president and his council to the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, when candidate for admission into their body, in conformity to their regulations respecting the admission of ordinary fellows / by James Syme ... June 1823.

  • Syme, James, 1799-1870.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A probationary essay on necrosis : submitted by the authority of the president and his council to the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, when candidate for admission into their body, in conformity to their regulations respecting the admission of ordinary fellows / by James Syme ... June 1823. 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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    primary or cartilaginous junction; and I should also wish to suggest, that patient and long suffering as the bones would appear to be, they occasionally becoming hardened under misfortune and bad usage, form false joints, to the patient's irretrievable loss, and the practitioner's everlasting disgrace. When the growth of bone is once established, by means of the irritation of a fracture, the new action is not confined to the surfaces occasioned by the fracture ; it extends to the in- ternal cavity, which is speedily obliterated at its newly form- ed orifices, by osseous matter effused from the inner surface of its cylindrical wall. The purpose intended by Nature in thus shutting up the unnatural openings which lead to the medullary cavity, is probably not so much to defend the fluid there contained, as to render the bone stronger at a part otherwise so much weakened. When the process of re-union is completed, and when the bone joining the extremities, as well as that filling up their central cavity, is perfected, then, indeed, the shaft is more than usually strong at the place where it was fractured. But it does not long continue to be so; for the absorbents soon remove the redundant matter, restore the canal, and render the bone altogether similar to its original condition. An action of the same sort is probably concerned in the formation of exostosis, which may in general be traced to some local injury or cause of irritation, and in that of the irregular, knobbed projections, so frequently noticed on the surtace of bones in whose neighbourhood there happens to be any organ unusually active. Reproduction of bone, also, I have no doubt, is effected in the majority of cases, after the same manner, and, indeed it might naturally have been suspected that the means employ- ed for the restoration would resemble those of their original formation. I simply state this opinion at present, leaving its particular consideration and defence to a more convenient opportunity. When the action becomes more decidedly inflammatory,