Fractures and dislocations.

  • Thomas Pickering Pick
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fractures and dislocations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    Predisposing- causes.—The causes wMch pre- dispose or conduce to fracture are numerous and varied. Thej may be conveniently considered under three heads: I. Natural causes pertaining to the individual. II. Diseased conditions of the individual (ca- chexia) . III. Causes confined to the bone. I. Tlie natural causes pertaining: to the individual may be classed as («) hereditary fragility, (^) age, (7) sex. Hereditary fragility of the bones appears to exist in certain individuals, so that the bones fracture from the slightest injury, or even from muscular con- traction, and this tendency to fracture appears to be transmitted from parent to offspring thi-ough successive generations. The author recently saw a lady who had fractured her thigh from muscular contraction. The patient's mother, ret. forty, sitting at dinner, bent over her chair to pick up something she had let fall. She slipped and fractured her humerus. The grandmother, £et. eighty-four, was standing on one leg putting a shoe on the other foot, and slipping, fractured the neck of the femur. The great-grandmother, set. seventy-nine, slipped in her bedroom and fractured her thigh. No male of the family was known to have suffered from fracture. Age has a very decided influence on the production of fracture. The most common age for fracture to occur is from twenty-five to sixty. In early life the bones are pliable and elastic, and bend to a much greater extent (before they break) than later in life, when they contain more earthy salts, and are there^ fore more brittle. Moreover, children when they fall, do so lightly, and thus fractures are not so commonly produced; nevertheless, Malgaigne has pointed out