Spinal curvature : comprising a description of the various types of curvature of the spine with the mechanical appliances best suited for their treatment / by R. Heather Bigg ; ill. by the author with numerous pen-and-ink drawings.
- Bigg, Henry Robert Heather, 1853-1911.
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Spinal curvature : comprising a description of the various types of curvature of the spine with the mechanical appliances best suited for their treatment / by R. Heather Bigg ; ill. by the author with numerous pen-and-ink drawings. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![changes of plane cannot be ganged with, accuracy in the living body, hence the rougher results of experience in many cases have to act as the guide, in lieu of the inapplicable refinements of the laws of science. But the whole treatment, whatever its keynote may be, must harmonise with the two principles aforesaid. The appliance, then, for osseo-ligamentous curva- ture in the second stage has, as its primary object, to govern restituence on the principles above laid down, and to preserve the body from any rapid or injurious changes that might result if proper ]3recautions were not taken; but it has in addition other objects. It has, as it were, to take charge of the body after the splint which was previously worn has ceased to be requisite. In the first stage the object of the passive splint was to remove to the fullest extent all weight from the diseased part of the spine, and to check as far as possible all its movements. In this second stage, however, the disease has been cured and no longer exists, and the necessity for i^assive rest is therefore gone, while the spine is again able to bear weight as it was wont to do, and must be gradually permitted to take its natural burden. Hence, while on the one hand the body has still to be kept under control (and that of an active kind, a point which constitutes a clear distinction between this and the previous stage), there is nevertheless not any neces- sity for the complete restraint which was before imposed upon it. The amount of controb and the length of time during which control is necessary, vary with the strength of the patient and the amount of restituent provocation that exists (which restituent provocation, it will be borne in mind, is due to the amount of deviation the consolidated mass presents from the original form of the vertebrae which constitute^ it). If the restituent provocation is slight, and the form which the spine tends to take does not differ](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21042007_0087.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
