Treatise on diseases of the bones / by Edward Stanley.

  • Stanley, Edward, 1793-1862.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on diseases of the bones / by Edward Stanley. 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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    sions suppuration between the periosteum and the bones, and these cases are to be regarded as analogous to those of acute periostitis upon other bones. The following is a well-marked history of such a form of spinal disease. Suppuration beneath the coverings of the Spine. A healthy man, forty-five years of age, was exposed to frost and snow through a long winter's night. A few days afterwards he was attacked with smarting pain in his back, a sensation he said like that of boiling water flowing over the skin. This lasted a fortnight, and was followed by a more se- vere pain, making him feel as if he was lying on sharp cutting flints. These were the symptoms preceding suppuration between the spine and its coverings. The pain gradually subsided, and was succeeded by slowly-increasing paraplegia. In about fourteen months from the com- mencement of the disease he died. On examining the spine, I found a large quantity of purulent fluid between the periosteum and the bodies of the fifth, sixth, and seventh dorsal vertebras. The purulent fluid accumulated upon the posterior surfaces of these vertebrae, al- though confined by the periosteum and posterior vertebral ligament, yet projected into the spinal canal sufficiently to compress the cord. The surfaces of the vertebra?, with which the purulent fluid had been in contact, were roughened, and their fibro-cartilages had disappeared*. I have known instances where, in the course of fever, acute inflam- mation has arisen in the bones of the spine, occasioning excessive vas- cularity of their cancellous texture, with destruction of the fibro-carti- lages, apparently by mortification and sloughing of their tissue. Purulent fluid is often found diffused through the cancellous texture of the vertebras ; but I have not known any certain example of cir- cumscribed abscess in a vertebra similar to that which occurs within the articular ends of long bones. There is, howover, in the museum of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a lumbar vertebra, hollowed out in the centre of its body into a round cavity, which communicates by a small opening with the spinal canal. It is not unlikely, that this vertebra had been the seat of circumscribed abscess, which burst into the spinal ca- * Louis has recorded cases in which impaired motion and sensation in the limbs en- sued from compression of the cord by purulent fluid accumulated within its bony canal. Memoircs ou Itecherchcs Anatomico-Pathologiques—Dc Pe'tat de la moelle epinale dans la carie verte'bralc.