Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget].

  • James Paget
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1843-4 / [Sir James Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/66 (page 44)
    situated at the attachment of the short portion of the biceps femoris. It was one and a half inches long, four lines thick, and projected outwards nearly three quarters of an inch. It was covered by the persistence of the femur, and a rather large nu¬ tritive artery of the femur passed through it; it had not at all the aspect of a morbid exostosis. VOICE. MM. Petrequin and Diday,* after, as they believe, satisfactorily disproving all previous explanations of the falsetto voice, maintain that in it “the glottis places itself in such a state that the vocal cords can no longer vibrate like reeds. Its contour represents the embouchure of a flute, and- it is not by the vibrations of the aperture, but by those of the air, that the sound is produced.” They do not explain how the assumed rigidity of the lips of the glottis by which these vibrations are prevented is produced ; [it would be very difficult to do so:] but they maintain their theory by the following statements: 1. There is an analogy between the tones of the faisetto voice and those of the flute, from which the former are often called fluty. 2. There are but two modes in which voice can be produced : by the vibration of the vocal cords and by that of the air ; and since the chest-notes are produced by the former, the falsetto must be produced by the latter. 3. Bass voices have commonly no falsetto notes [?]; because the aperture of the glottis is too large for the air to be thrown into vibrations in passing through it. 4 High chest-notes easily pass into the corresponding falsetto notes when we try to soften them ; for when we wish to diminish the loudness of anv note we are singing, the glottis is instinctively constricted to prevent the note from falling in consequence of the diminished force of the current of air; but when the note which is being sung is high, and the ligaments already very tense, a reduced cur¬ rent of air could not make them vibrate if they were still more tense; the air therefore., instead of making them vibrate, vibrates itself as it passes between them, and the glottis is changed from a reed-like to a flute like instrument. 5. In the same manner when we try to strengthen a low falsetto note, it unavoid¬ ably assumes the character of a chest note, by the lips of the glottis passing from the rigid state to that of vibration,—from the state in which the air alone vibrat s in passing between them, to that in which themselves vibrate. 6. The difficulty of passing imperceptibly in an ascending or descending scale, to or from the falsetto notes, indicates that the state of the glottis in the two kinds of voice is wholly different. 7. The supposed change, from the vibrating to the rigid state of the lips of the glottis, may be imitated and illustrated with a reed-instrument, such as a bassoon. Its ordinary notes are like chest notes—but if, while sounding- them, the reed be suddenly taken hold of and held with forceps so as to prevent its vibrations (though nothing else be altered,) the notes become acute, soft, and whistling— they pass from reed notes to flute notes—from those like the chest- notes to those like the falsetto. NERVOUS SYSTEM. General anatomy. Structure of the nerve-flbres. Reichertf confirms Volkmann and Bidder’s account of the speciality of the sympathetic nerve-fibres, their distinctness in size and structure from the cerebro-spinal.J He believes also that the tissue which invests the smallest fasciculi of the sympathetic fibres of the higher vertebrata, (that which has been variously described as filamentous epi¬ thelium, fibro-cellular tissue, formatio granulosa, *&c.,) is a transparent, finely granulated membrane, which has a peculiar tendency to wrinkle, and sometimes to separate, in a longitudinal direction, so as to assume the appearance of a fibrous texture. § * Gazette Medicate, Fevr. 23, and Mars 2, 1844. + Muller’s Archiv, 1844; Jahresbericht, p. ccvi. t See Report, 1842, p. 34. But Valentin still maintains the absence of any distinction between the two sets of fibres, in Muller’s Archiv, 1844, Heft iv, p. 395. § In like manner he describes the tissue connecting the vessels and other elementary parts of the kidney, as Mr. Bowman does who calls it the matrix, as a uniform structureless substance which has even less tendency than the similar connecting tissue in most parts of the body has to wrinkle itself or break up so uniformly as to appear like fibro-cellular tissue. In all this his view coincides with that of Dr. Todd and Mr. Bowman. (See last Report, p. 5.)