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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![with deficiency of bone earth, and with more or less altera- tion of the gelatin of bone and of the medullary membrane. a. As use strengthens parts, disuse weakens them. In a limb long unused from disease, the bones, together with the soft parts, waste, or are atrophied. A young woman had her leg amputated for disease of the tibia, which had existed eleven years. At its commencement, it had attacked the head of the bone, and implicated the knee joint, which became anchylosed. The disease then left the knee, and established itself in the middle and lower part of the tibia. The patient could not use the limb; and where not swollen by disease, it wasted. On examining the limb, the upper part was found to be atrophied. The head of the tibia is a thin shell of bone; and instead of its proper close cancellous struc- ture, a few fine threads only of bone are drawn across it. Among these, the marrow lay in large masses, semifluid, supported by the medullary membrane alone, [d. 29.] b. In childhood, and particularly among female children, the round bones are liable to a form of atrophy which cor- rects itself with advancing years. The weakness involves the ligamentous structures. It shows itself at the ancles, at the knees, but principally in the back : the spine be- comes curved from weakness, inclining to one side at the loins, but being simultaneously bent at the upper part in the opposite direction, so that the trunk may preserve the perpendicular. This complaint is atrophy from arrest or retardation of structural growth. The weight and size of the child increases faster than the hardness and strength of its bones and ligaments. Sometimes the spine is twisted, sometimes incurvated forward as well as laterally. c. In old age, the bones become weaker and more brittle. The cortex is thinner; and in it, and in the cancelli, the due quantity of bone earth is wanting. This is the cause of the frequency of fracture of the neck of the thigh bone in elderly persons. The mechanical disadvantage arising out of the obliquity of that part now becomes apparent ; it breaks from trifling accidents. Through senile atrophy, the neck of the femur, when not broken, often becomes depressed and shortened.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21066735_0053.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
