On the development of the female pelvis / by J. Matthews. Duncan.

  • James Matthews Duncan
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the development of the female pelvis / by J. Matthews. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    change occurs in other long bones similarly treated, as in the femora of young lads who ride much on horseback.1 Moreover, when the iliac beams are inordinately subjected to the natural forces in youth, their bending increases to an abnormal extent, as happens in factory children who have never suffered from rachitis, and whose skeletons present no evidence of the previous existence of the disease.2 In the field of pathology many illustrations occur, under the most varied circumstances, of the great influence of long-continued though slight mechanical forces in changing the shape of healthy bones.3 It is indeed inconceivable that elastic living tissues should endure powerful and continued pressure without being greatly and per¬ manently affected by it. “ The shape (says Dr Humphrey 4) of the bones (and here it maybe remarked that the uniformity tvith which they acquire their proper shape is truly marvellous) must be due chiefly to those same developmental forces whereby the shape of the body generally is determined. Future investigation may point out the proximate causes by which shape is evolved ; at present, we have little or no clue to them. There are, however, some few secondary agents—assistants, as they may be termed, to the primary developmental processes—whose influence we can trace in moulding the shape, etc., of the bones : one of the chief of these is pressure. The effect of its operation may be observed in a variety of ways. Thus the modelling of the cranial, thoracic, and other bones upon the parts enveloped by them must be, in some measure at least, a result of the pressure of those parts upon the osseous material in its soft, growing state. The furrows and channels of the bones are, in like manner, partly originated and preserved by the pressure of the tendons, nerves, and vessels upon them. They do not exist when these are absent; and they disappear, becoming filled up, when these are removed. The curvatures of the bones, though chiefly attributable to the forces of development, may also, in some slight degree, be owing to the influence of pressure; some to the pressure of adjacent organs; some to pressure caused by the action of the muscles pulling upon them in the foetal state, or by the weight ol the body compressing them afterwards. It has been before remarked, and may be again mentioned in connection with this subject, that the bones are, as a general rule, most curved in those 1 For a variety of facts illustrative of this subject, see Soemmerring, Traite d'Osteologie (French translation by Jourdan, p. 23). - The converse of this appears to be true. Hubert (loc. cit.) makes the fol¬ lowing statement:—“ Ainsi chez une name agee de vingt et un ans, idiote, bien constitute d’ailleurs, mais qui n’avait jamais pu marcher, Nsegele a trouve le bassin semblable, pour la forme et la grandeur, a celui d’un enfant de sept a huit ans.” 3 Hokitansky’s Pathological Anatomy (Sydenham translation, vol. iii., passim), for a description of the effects of distortion of the spine on the shape of trie pelvis. 4 Treatise on the Skeleton. Cambridge, 1858. P. 48.
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