On necrosis : being an experimental inquiry into the agency ascribed to the absorbents, in the removal of the sequestrum : with some observations concerning the adhesion of living to dead bone / by George Gulliver.

Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On necrosis : being an experimental inquiry into the agency ascribed to the absorbents, in the removal of the sequestrum : with some observations concerning the adhesion of living to dead bone / by George Gulliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the tibia, which was somewhat thickened, by boiling’. (C. 58, in Mr. Liston’s collection.) These experiments are selected from a great num- ber which I have made, all tending to the same con- clusion. They have not been sufficiently varied and extensive to admit of being adduced as peremptory proof of the impossibility of the absorption of dead bone, in opposition to the incontestable power of the absorbents in the removal of inorganic particles from the living body ; but I conceive that it is now fully established, with how much difficulty dead bone is subject to absorption, and that whatever may be the agency of this process in the removal of living parts, it can no longer be regarded as the means by which the sequestrum disappears in cases of necrosis. The result of the inquiry is not altogether devoid of interest in relation to some important physiological questions. The occasional persistence of bullets in the living body has been usually ascribed to the slight irritation produced by them in the contiguous tissues. But the consolidation by osseous substance, of dead with living bone, is a curious fact in the history of adhesion, which may tend to illustrate the nature of the union between the vascular and extra vascular parts of animals, and to shew that the opinion of Mr. Hunter concerning the vitality of transplanted parts is not without exception. It appears to me to be a very interesting fact, that a tissue which has been long dead should possess the