Case of mollities and fragilitas ossium, accompanied with urine strongly charged with animal matter / by William MacIntyre.

  • MacIntyr, William.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of mollities and fragilitas ossium, accompanied with urine strongly charged with animal matter / by William MacIntyre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    countable accessory—tbe peculiar condition of the urine. Every successive step in the investigation led to the same conclusion, by disclosing a similar disorganization of structure in other districts of the body, which had, during life, been the seat of suffering. The bones were not subjected to chemical analysis, but their diminished bulk, their lightness, flexibility and brittle¬ ness sufficiently attested their having been, m great measure, despoiled of their natural constituents, both animal and earthy,—in that condition, in short, which Mr. Solly has appropriately denominated “ Osteo-malacia fragilis rubra.” The identity of the two cases was further established by the minute morbid anatomy of the diseased structures m each. Mr. Dalrymple, who, in our case, kindly undertook the micro¬ scopical examination of two of the affected bones (a rib and two lumbar vertebrse), has given the result of his observa¬ tions in an interesting paper, communicated to the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science/ for June 1846. It would appear from this investigation, that the disease had commenced in the cancellated structure, but that the external laminse were also involved, being much reddened and atro¬ phied. The material filling the large cancellous cavities m the interior was found to be composed of granular matter, oil globules, nucleated cells, constituting the bulk of the mass,—a few caudate cells and blood disks extravasated largely amongst the other cells, and giving the red colour to the gelatiniform mass. This account accords very much with Mr. Birketffs de- scription (given in Mr. Solly’s paper) of the microscopic anatomy of a bone affected with mollifies ossium, and seems to point to a disease essentially malignant in its nature, but differing, according to Mr. Dalrymple, in some special par¬ ticulars from the true malignant disease of bone as we are accustomed to regard it. Instead of progressively repro¬ ducing and developing themselves without limitation, the new and morbid formation which replaced the original and sound structure seem to have been, at an early stage oi their
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