Volume 1
On a new operation for the cure of lateral curvature of the spine: with remarks on the causes and nature of that disease / By Frederic C. Skey.
- Frederic Carpenter Skey
- Date:
- 1841
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On a new operation for the cure of lateral curvature of the spine: with remarks on the causes and nature of that disease / By Frederic C. Skey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
20/56 page 14
![]4 concavity of which is on the right, the apex of the organ is felt at the distance of four or five inches from the edge of the sternum; while, in examples of concavity to the left, the pulsations of the whole of the heart are felt on the right side of the chest. The change on the opposite or convex side of the curve is as remarkable; for as by the leaning of the vertebrae towards the ribs these bones are brought nearer in contact, so the leaning of the vertebrae from the ribs as necessarily enlarges the intervals between them, and the lung on this side performs in a considerable degree the office of the two organs; so that patients thus affected find it indispensable to free respiration to confine themselves to that position which admits of the freest play to the expanded half of the chest,—in other words, they can lie only on the side of the body corresponding with the flattened side of that cavity. The half of the chest corresponding to the convexity of the curve is, usually, in a more striking degree distorted from its natural form, than any part of the figure, for the ribs, instead of pursuing a curve resembling a capital C, are pressed outwards at their attachments at the ver¬ tebrae, and at the same time are dragged down¬ wards by the action of the sacro-lumbalis, and by these means the angles of the ribs, or the points of their greatest posterior prominence, are drawn or](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31928882_0001_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
