Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1842-3 / [Sir James Paget].

  • James Paget
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1842-3 / [Sir James Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/32 (page 6)
    G has a tendency to split up almost ad infinitum in the longitudinal direction, and which has a filamentous appearance from streaks and creasings on its surface. [In small hard tendons, such as those of insects, this description may hold; they are compact and nearly homogeneous bands, with scarcely any appearance of a fila¬ mentous composition ; but in the looser varieties of fibro-cellular tissue I cannot doubt the existence of bundles of distinct filaments.] A few facts concerning the anatomy of tendons may be collected from the long discussions on tenotomy at the Parisian Academy of Medicine.* * * § MUSCULAR TISSUE. 1 have lately found a mode of attachment of the ultimate fibres of muscles to their tendons which has not yet, I think, been made known. It may be distinctly seen in the muscle torn out from the leg of a fly. Each of three tendons, which are planted in the proximal end of the last but one articulation of the leg, runs in a long straight and Hat band up the interior of the next superior division of the limb, and receives on each of its edges the broad and somewhat rounded bases of the muscular fibres. These are arranged in a penniform manner, the base of each fibre on one side of the tendon corresponding to the halves of the bases of two adjacent fibres on the opposite side, like the leaflets of the pteris and some other ferns. The fibres are flat, and their extremities, instead of being ensheathed in the tendinous tissue, only adhere to the border of the tendon, and receive on their outer edges one or two finer tendinous filaments, as if for greater fixity. Dr. Remakf has found that portions of the diaphragm, the heart, and the mus¬ cular walls of the larger vessels of many animals of all classes, will continue spon¬ taneously contracting for as many as forty-eight hours after death. He has also pointed out their several modes of contraction, (?) which he distinguishes as creep¬ ing, undulating, peristaltic, and serpentine or zig-zag. Rigor Mortis. An ingenious paper has been published by Ernst BrueckerJ to prove that the rigor mortis is due to the coagulation of the fibrin which is effused from the blood-vessels in the liquor sanguinis for the nutrition of the tissues, (especially of the muscles,) but which at the time of death has not yet been assimi¬ lated. The paper is chiefly important for the numerous analogies which it points out between the coagulation and subsequent changes of the fibrin and the con¬ traction of the muscles; analogies of which Mr. Hunter had already illustrated many, and some of the most important. But the explanation of the rigor mortis is rendered improbable by the observations of Mr. Bowman, which 1 can fully confirm, and which prove that the muscle is rigid because its fibres, or parts of them, are contracted, and contracted in the same manner as during life. And some examinations which I have made of the rigor mortis in the involuntary muscles, afford equally strong evidence of its being due in them also to the mus¬ cular contraction. I believe that all involuntary muscles pass into the continued and fixed contraction of the rigor mortis as soon as they cease to be irritable, and to contract under ordinary stimuli. This may be seen distinctly in many arteries, as well as in the digestiv e canal and urinary bladder ; but the best examples are pre¬ sented in the hearts of recently slain animals, or of men examined soon after ap¬ parent death.§ As soon as they cease to be irritable, the walls of all their cavities, * Bulletin tie 1’Acad. Roy. de Medecine, Nov. 1812, Gazette Medicate, and other journals of the same date. t Muller’s Archiv, 1843, Heft ii. \ R>. 1842, Heft iii. § Hearts in the stale of rigor mortis are those commonly described as affected by con¬ centric hypertrophy. Dr. George Budd proved some years ago that this appearance of an increased thickness of the walls with diminution of the cavities could not be due to disease of the heart; (Medico-Chirurg. Trans., vol. xxi, p. 296;) and I may add to the evidence which he adduced, (and which ought to have been taken as decisive of the question,) that in every instance the hearts of healthy oxen become affected with an ex¬ treme degree of concentric hypertrophy within an hour after they are slaughtered. I have litt'e doubt also that the hearts of all persons pass into a similar state within a few hours after apparent death ; certainly a large majority of the hearts examined within the first