A treatise on special and general anatomy: in two volumes (Volume 1).

  • William Edmonds Horner
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on special and general anatomy: in two volumes (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    OF THE PERIOSTEUM. the ancients adopted the opinion, that the ligaments and pe- riosteum were the same. Many fibres pass from the perios- teum to-the bone, by which it is caused to adhere. These fibres are more numerous and stronger at the extremities than in the middle of the cylindrical bones; also, upon the thick bones, than upon the flat ones. The blood vessels of the bones accompany these fibres and contribute to the adhe- sion. The periosteum is united to the muscles and parts lying upon it by cellular substance. The adhesion of the periosteum to the bones varies in the several periods of life. In infancy it may be separated from them with great facility; in the adult it adheres more strongly in consequence of its internal face having taken on a secretion of bone, by which it is blended intimately into the bone it surrounds; and in old age it is still more adherent, from the progress of its ossification. It is thick and soft in the infant, and becomes thinner and more compact as life ad- vances. The organization of the periosteum is fibrous, and the fibres pass very much in the same direction with the fibres of the bones, excepting the flat bones, on which it is not radi- ated. Those fibres have different lengths, the more super- ficial are longer, while the more deeply seated extend but a small distance. Inflammation develops these in a striking manner, by occasionally making the membrane as thick as an aponeurotic expansion. The blood vessels of the periosteum are numerous, and can be easily injected. They come from the contiguous trunks, and ramify minutely, into a vascular net-work, many of whose branches penetrate into the bone, and have the distri- bution already mentioned. A few lymphatic vessels have been observed in it. Its nerves have not been clearly discovered, though the sensation of extreme pain, when violence is done to it in an inflamed state, may be thought a proof of their ex- istence. In health its sensations are null, or extremely ob- scure. The periosteum receives the insertion of tendons, of liga- ments, and of the aponeuroses. In early life, owing to the