The Hunterian Oration : delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons ... 1823 / [Sir William Blizard].

William Blizard

Date:: 1823

Credit: The Hunterian Oration : delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons ... 1823 / [Sir William Blizard]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$important facts,—first, the size of the maternal vessels, from whose openings the minute drops of concentrated calcareous solution had issued,—and, secondly, that the ])recipitcmt of the lime was contained in the ambient liquid, which is in- terposed between the putaminous membrane of the egg and the uterine s\irfaces. I have deposited in The Museum of This College, an extensive collection of Crustaceous and Testaceous Speci- mens, to illustrate and prove the doctrines now advanced; and, I trust, they will be found sufficient to establish this attempted addition to organic Physiology and Pathology. The manner of growth and the final structure of the internal bones of man show, that their calcareous portions have not been deposited within arborescing vessels,—as the linear directions of the calcareous deposits in the bones of the skull, and in the shafts of the limbs, unequivocally prove. The modelling of vascular bones is principally governed by the direction of the fibrous structure of the animal gela- tine ; an organic formation, which must have existed before the solution of lime had been presented to the phosphoric precipitant within the interstices of the gelatine,—else the vessels conveying the lime would have been choked up, and their solidified arborescing tubes would have remained to announce the circumstance. The organic portions of the human teeth were, in tlieir first stage, vascular gelatinous ]iulps, into which mass the concretable lime is infiltrated, and it gradually fills their in- terstices. This exception to fibrous texture, in the animal basis of teeth, has a parallel in the petrous or auditory G$