Chronic rheumatic arthritis of the shoulder-joint / [Robert Adams].

  • Adams, Robert, 1791-1875.
Date:
[1849?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chronic rheumatic arthritis of the shoulder-joint / [Robert Adams]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHRONIC RHEUMATIC ARTHRITIS OF THE SHOULDER-JOINT. BY ROBERT ADAMS, M. D., M. R. I. A. FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE PATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. Mr. Adams exhibited a remarkable specimen of this disease, and made the following observations with reference to it. Partial dislocations of the shoulder-joint from accident are very familiarly spoken of by surgeons, but the reality of the case, as far as I know, has never been demonstrated anatomically. In the year 1836, at the meeting of the British Association at Bristol, I thought I had succeeded in proving that the case, then a solitary one, of the dissection of an alleged partial dislocation of the head of the humerus from accident, published by Sir A. Cooper(a), was not really the result of accident, but of the effects of chronic rheumatic arthritis of the shoulder(6). Subsequently to this, viz., in the year 1837, Dr. Hargrave(c), now one of our Professors of Surgery in the College of Surgeons in this city, published an account of the dissection of a second case of alleged partial luxation from accident of the shoulder- joint, but this specimen I must also, after careful examination, con¬ sider to be another example of the result of chronic rheumatic arthritis. If the previous history of these two cases had been known, I should have been very reluctant to call in question the judgment or opinion of such authorities upon this subject; but as the history of both these cases was altogether unknown, I have felt that any one, after having carefully examined the engravings of these specimens, is at liberty to draw his own conclusions as to them. For my part, my conclusion is, that although partial displacements of the head of (a) Treatise on Fractures and Dislocations, 1823, page 448, plate 21. (b) Athenaeum, September, 1836. (c) Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal.
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