Fractures, dislocations, diseases and deformities of the bones of the trunk and upper extremities / by Hugh Owen Thomas.
- Hugh Owen Thomas
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Fractures, dislocations, diseases and deformities of the bones of the trunk and upper extremities / by Hugh Owen Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)
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![\ Part III] X5 the other * The shortening observed in adults is never greater than that observed in youths, if we take into consideration the relative size of the extremities. I may perhaps better convey to the reader my meaning by bringing to his recollection what little difference could be observed in the lengths, breadths and forms of the noses of a score of infants, and how con- siderable would be the difference when they became adults. Granting the correctness of my view of the cause of most lateral spinal deformities to be, that the two extremities are from birth unequal in length, and do grow apace, yet I must admit that the maintainance of proportional length is not continued in all cases up to adult life, an exception by no means rare is to be observed. For instance :— A. , aged six years of age, is under observation, having a slight projection of the right shoulder blade and a slight lateral curve of the spine, caused by the left lower extremity being a quarter of an inch shorter than the right. At the age of twenty years, after A. has been during fourteen years occasionally under surgical observation, and using means to neutralize the difference between the extremities, there still exists a slight trace of a lateral curve of the spine and a projection of the shoulder blade ; but it can be shown that there exists now a difference in length of three quarters of an inch between the two extremities. B. , aged six years, comes under observation with exactly the same defect as was obvious in the case of A., with the difference that, at the age of sixteen to seventeen, the shorter extremity ceased to grow, so that, instead of there being a difference of about three fourths of an inch when 13. arrived at the age of twenty years, there was an obvious shortening of one and a half inches. * Actual arrest or slow development of a lower extremity is to be met with, but in those cases the disproportion between the two extremities is very great, so that adults may sometimes have one limb eight inches shorter than the other.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21290118_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
