Anormal nutrition in the human articular cartilages, with experimental researches on the lower animals / by P. Redfern.

  • Redfern Peter, 1822-1912.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anormal nutrition in the human articular cartilages, with experimental researches on the lower animals / by P. Redfern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    stance of this tissue will be seen to be very different, at least in degree, from that complete irrigation of the textures usually styled vascular, for yet a large portion of the substance of the cartilage is very far removed from any vessel containing blood. Now, as it has never been shown that cartilage, under any circumstances whatever, becomes vascular, it is clear that it is in the best possible position amongst the textui’es for the investigation of those processes which are continually going on without the immediate agency of blood-vessels, and take place, properly speaking, in the texture itself. It is stated by Professor Alison, that the essential peculiarity of inflammation is a peculiar perversion of nutrition or of secretion; and in Professor Bennett’s admirable work on Inflammation as a process of anormal nutrition, it is plainly demonstrated, that all the changes which take place in the matters exuded in inflammation are alone referable to the general plan by which the nutrition of healthy textures is effected, and that thus softening, induration, hypertrophy, ulceration, &c., are produced. That changes, which may be equally referred to an anormal nu- trition of the texture, take place in the diseases to which articular cartilages are so liable, appears plain from the nature of the changes that occur in them in such cases, and which I shall endeavour to describe and illustrate, as they appeared to me during lengthened examinations of a number of cases, the particulars of which will be afterwards detailed. It is said that inflammation, ulceration, softening, hypertrophy, atrophy, and ossification, are the diseases to which cartilages are liable. Of the existence of inflammation in them, there is perhaps no other evidence than that furnished by ulceration, which is unques- tionably the most important of all the affections of this texture, and is generally believed to be the climax of the most severe affections of the joints. Whether atrophy occurs, except as the result of such changes as take place in ulceration, is yet doubtful; whilst ossifica- tion appears to be confined to the cartilages of the larynx, the costal cartilages, and the fibro-cartilages found uniting the bones at the synchondroses. The most important views of the nature and progress of ulceration in cartilages may now be briefly stated, that it may be seen whether or not they are consistent with the changes which microscopic ob- servations reveal in the textures. Sir B. Broclie saw very plainly that nutritive changes take place in cartilages, and concluded that they contain blood-vessels. He argued, 1st, that there are instances in which vessels extend into the carti- lage from diseased bones ; 2d, that, notwithstanding the great amount of friction to which many cartilages are exposed, no change takes place in them, and yet the enamel of the teeth wears away in old age; 3d, that the structure of cartilage becomes changed in disease in such a way as to indicate that new matter is deposited and the old