Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outlines of human pathology / by Herbert Mayo. 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.
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![Exostoses present in their structure all the varieties which healthy bones exhibit. Sometimes their grain is dense and compact; this is especially the case with those that grow from the cranial bones, as upon the temporal or frontal. In other instances, they have a crust of the consistence of, but of less thickness than, that of the bone on which they grow, joined to a cancellous structure of the ordinary density. They appear, in some instances, as if formed by the development of cancelli in a part of the cortex: in other words, the cortex which covers them, and that on which they rest, are together of the thickness of the cortex of the sound bone adjacent. [<?. 5.] Exostoses have not more sensibility than healthy bone: but they are susceptible of inflammation, and then become the seat of pain; and they often occasion pain by their pressure upon more sensible parts. When in the neighbour- hood of important organs, they are liable to disturb their functions. Fixed pains in the head, and epilepsy, have been produced by the growth of exostoses from the inner table of the cranium. The causes of exostoses cannot generally be traced: it is certain, however, that they are occasionally mechanical; such as pressure or a blow. Exostoses sometimes spontaneously disappear. Their absorption is promoted by counter-irritants, mercury, iodine. When removed by an operation, they generally do not recur. A young woman was a patient in the Middlesex Hospital, under Mr. Cartwright, with a humeral exostosis, which, after several remedies had been tried, was sawn off. In a year another exostosis grew, nearly in the same place; but on a rubefacient plaister being applied over it, an abscess formed, and the new bone was absorbed. Exostoses sometimes perish by necrosis. d. Sometimes the tumour, which forms an exostosis, is not originally bony. In a child, at the age of six months, a soft tumour was observed to grow from the front of the alveolar process of the upper jaw. Sir Astley Cooper re- moved the tumour; but it grew again, and gradually became hard. The subject of the disease grew up a fine young](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21066735_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
