Successful removal of two osteomata of the orbit : one originating in the frontal, the other in the ethmoidal cells with a history of osteomata of the neighboring pneumatic cavities of the orbit / by Joseph A. Andrews.

Andrews, Joseph Andrew.

Date:: 1887

Credit: Successful removal of two osteomata of the orbit : one originating in the frontal, the other in the ethmoidal cells with a history of osteomata of the neighboring pneumatic cavities of the orbit / by Joseph A. Andrews. 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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$consisted of a shell of compact bony tissue^ containing a large nucleus of cartilage (?). [I have had an opportunity of examining the specimen of the tumor in the museum of the New York Hospital, and it is made up of cancellous tissue (not cartilage) with a thin shell of compact tissue covering one side of it.— Author.] It was formerly customary to designate every bony formation in the orbit which showed itself above the plane of the bone an exostosis. Cruveilhier was the first observer to direct attention to the differences between the bony tumors of the orbit. He showed that these growths developed in the interior of the bone in such a manner as to push the peripheric layer of bone before them like a capsule ; he therefore called them mcap- suled bony growths (cori)s osseux enkyst^s) (Anatomic Pathologique, J. Cruveilhier, tome iii., p. 871). Subse- quently Virchow studied the nature of these tumors, and he showed that the orbital osteomata in general may de- velop in various ways ; a great number of them, he be- lieved, originated in the diploe, and in their further de- velopment distended the shell of bone enclosing them, which they gradually broke through. These tumors Vir- chow called enostoseSy thus separating this form of oste- oma from the class of exostoses. The situation of these growths in the frontal and eth- moidal sinuses, etc., is readily determined, but the ques- tion of the actual starting-point is not so easily answered. Rokitansky has suggested that these osteomata of pneu- matic cavities were developed from enchondromata ; but we shall see by reference to the cases of this disease which I have here collected (representing all the cases which have been carefully records d in literature), that there is no foundation for this opinion. Professor Arnold, of Heidelberg {Virchow's Archiv, 1873, Ivii., p. 159), has suggested that the tumors in question were developed from remnants of foetal carti- lage, giving as the only support for this opinion the man-$