Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On articular cartilage / by Alex. Ogston. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![[From the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, Vol. X.] ON ARTICULAR CARTILAGE. By Alex. Ogston, M.D. Surgeon to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. (PL I. to vi.) Articular Cartilage is generally looked upon as a structure which has few functions, other than those of a passive nature, to perform. Its value as a buffer for diminishing concussions, and as a medium for preventing undue friction in joints, is univer¬ sally admitted. But its situation beyond the range of the vascular system, and its consequent slowness in reacting to the stimulus of injury or of surrounding disease, have led to its being regarded as a tissue which, apart from the functions conceded above, participates only passively in physiological and pathological processes, and might, save for these functions, have been without damage omitted from the system. It seems to me that this estimate of its nature and functions has been the cause why it occupies so subordinate a place in the accounts we possess of observations on, and investigations into, diseases of joints generally; and some of the conclusions at which I have arrived from a study of normal and patho¬ logical articular cartilage are so opposed to the generally received opinions, that I venture to believe they will have some little value in modifying these opinions, and enabling us to form a more correct estimate of the forces put forth by this structure both in its physiological and diseased conditions. It will be conceded that a knowledge of the true functions which a tissue normally possesses, is of the utmost importance in every point of view. It enables us to assign it its just value among surrounding, and, it may be, dissimilar structures, to rank it in its proper place as one of the constituent elements of the living whole, and to follow with a clear comprehension its pathological alterations per se, as well as their reactions on surrounding parts and on the whole organism. We cannot afford to dispense with this knowledge in regard to any portion of the body, for we see that just in proportion to our compre¬ hension of the various normal functions, characteristics, and tendencies of organs and tissues, is the clearness of our views of 4 VOL. X.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30573403_0001.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
