Volume 1

Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  • Royal College of Surgeons of England. Museum.
Date:
1846-9
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    2. Cartilaginous and Osseous Tumours. [Enchondroma, of Miiller ; Sarcoma cartilagineum ; Sarcoma chondroides; including, when seated in or upon bones, the Osteo-chondroma; Osseous Exostosis; Ivory Exostosis.] The cartilaginous tumours resemble, in both structure and chemical compo- sition, the cartilage of the festal skeleton, to which also they in many instances display a further resemblance in their tendency to ossification. The bone in an ossified cartilaginous tumour is either dense, hard, and tough, like the wall of one of the long bones of the skeleton, or it consists of cancellous tissue which contains marrow, and which, when the ossification of the tumour is complete, is invested by a thin layer or outer wall of compact bone. Those tumours alone which are formed by ossification of cartilaginous tumours, or of which the tissue resembles, as stated above, that of the natural bones of the skeleton, are here arranged as examples of osseous tumours, and as be- longing to the same species with the cartilaginous, of which they are indeed only a further development. Other tumours formed, either wholly or in part, of bone, such as the osteoid, and some examples of medullary cancers which have a kind of bony skeleton, are arranged under other specific names ; for they essen- tially differ from these true osseous tumours in that, among other differences, the bone which forms or is contained in them is neither hard and resisting like the compact tissue, nor cancellous and full of marrow like the cancellous tissue, of the bones of the skeleton. The following specimens, from 197 to 207 a, are arranged to illustrate, 1st, the general characters of cartilaginous tumours; 2nd, the characters of the osseous tumours developed fi-om them; 3rd, the softening to which, as to a degeneration opposed to their development into bone, the cartilaginous tumours are liable; and, 4th, the combination of cartilaginous with medullary tumours. The first three of these chief points are further illustrated by the numerous specimens of cartilaginous and osseous tumours of bones which are arranged in the series of the diseases of Bones [No. 772 to 796, and No. 3214 to 3220], on the same plan as the specimens in the following section, and which, together with these, display the following general facts:—1. That cartilaginous tumours may be divided into two forms or varieties, according as the tumour is either composed of numerous masses, lobes, or nodules, severally invested and united together by fibro-cellular tissues, as in 197-8-9, 207, and others, or consists of a
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