Practical anatomy: a manual of dissections / by Christopher Heath.

  • Christopher Heath
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical anatomy: a manual of dissections / by Christopher Heath. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    493/600 (page 483)
    PAET y. DISSECTION OF THE BACK AND SPINAL CORD. In dissecting the Back [as the various muscles overlap different regions, the dissectors while adhering in general to their own part, must work more or less together]. An incision is to be made from the occiput to the sacrum in the median line, and another along each crest of the ilium at right angles to it. The dissectors should then raise the skin with all the infil- trated fascia, going at once down to the superficial muscles, through which the cutaneous nerves appear. On the left side of the subject the arm is to be drawn forward so as to put the latissimus dorsi on the stretch, and the dissector should begin to clean the lower part of that muscle, and work upward to the trapezius; on the right side the arm should be pulled down at first, and the head drawn over to the opposite side with hooks, to put the upper fibres of the trapezius on the stretch, and the dissector must begin at the upper border of that muscle (already exposed in the posterior triangle) and work down- ward to the latissimus dorsi. On both sides the arm and scapula will require to be moved from time to time to put the different sets of fibres on the stretch in turn. The Cutaneous Nerves are derived from the poste- rior divisions of the spinal nerves and are of small size. The cervical and upper dorsal nerves pierce the trapezius close to the spine, the second and third turning up to the occiput; the lower dorsal and the lumbar nerves pierce the latissimus dorsi along the oblique line at which the muscular fibres commence; while the sacral nerves give small branches through the tendinous expansion near the spine. The First Layer of Muscles (Fig. 224 [right side]) consists of the Trapezius and Latissimus Dorsi. The trapezius partially overlaps the latissimus, but between them and the base of the scapula is a small triangular interval in which the lower fibres of the rhomboideus major