The antiquity of disease / by Roy L. Moodie.

  • Roy Lee Moodie
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The antiquity of disease / by Roy L. Moodie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pathological evidences have been called to my attention by Dr. Willis ton and by Dr. Case. The few instances known are certainly not all of Permian pathology. Studies so far made constitute merely an introduction to a study of the ancient evidences of disease among fossil vertebrates. HISTORICAL SKETCH Our knowledge of the antiquity of disease is contained in a body of facts which has been accumulated during the past one hundred and fifty years through the activi¬ ties of various observers. The scattered and unrelated observations may be gathered into a coherent subject which has been called paleopathology, although the term was not proposed until near the end of this long period of observation. Pathological conditions on the fossil bones of ancient animals were first recognized in Pleistocene mammals, especially those of the European cavern deposits. In 1774 the subject was opened by E. J. C. Esper, a professor in Erlangen, who described a lesion which he regarded as an osteosarcoma on the lower half of the femur of a cave bear. Later students revised his interpretation to a callus formation surrounding a badly infected fracture, and to this day osteosarcomata are unknown in a fossil condition. Goldfuss and Cuvier added to our knowledge of the subject in the opening decades of the past century by discussing lesions of fractures particularly in a Pleistocene hyena and a fossil ungulate. The year 1825 is significant in the history of paleo¬ pathology because of the entrance of a medical man, Philipp Franz von Walther, by his description of the
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