Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities.

  • Watson, W. Spencer (William Spencer), 1836-1906.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    different forms of coryza gives rise to much irritation of the mucous membrane and the skin of the aperture of the nostrils, but the true cause of this changed condition is not yet sufficiently demonstrated. The mucous glands in the pituitary membrane exude a stringy, transparent, and inodorous fluid; this becomes thicker on exposure to the air, and if not got rid of by blowing the nose, as when secreted in rather large quantity during the night, becomes hard, and often dries into the form of crusts, moulded upon the surfaces whence they have been secreted. The Development of the ]N'ose. The external nose in the foetus, and in children, is much less prominent and more flattened out than in the adult, and, in con- sequence of the absence of the frontal eminences and sinuses, it forms with the forehead a much more acute angle : the depressed line, in the profile of the infant, being replaced in the adult by a more or less prominent one. The nasal fossse are relatively smaller in size, and much less complex than in the adult, and the whole olfactory apparatus is later in coming to maturity than the senses of hearing and sight; their vertical diameter is remarkably small, the sinuses being not yet formed, and the lateral masses of the ethmoid being still cartilaginous. The cribriform plate of the ethmoid, at birth, is a mere membranous plate continuous with the falx cerebri of the dura mater, and attached behind to the partially ossified body of the sphenoid. The vertical plate of the ethmoid is cartilaginous at this period, but the vomer is already ossified; some months after birth the nasal fossse extend in all their diameters, and the difterent sinuses are developed. At the age of two years the frontal sinuses and ethmoidal cells have begun to form, and the hollowing out of the antrum Highmorianum goes on simultaneously. The antra appear as cavities at an earlier period than any other of the sinuses, the development com- mencing about the fourth month of foetal life, and at birth have a rounded form, which later on becomes irregularly pyramidal.