This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ...of rodent action, yet for the practical surgeon, sequestra are, to all intents and purposes, incapable of absorption. AVhile live bone--and life should preserve against influences from without--is frequently largely dissolved, therefore such solution is more or less a vital act, not a mere passive yielding. Although I ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ...of rodent action, yet for the practical surgeon, sequestra are, to all intents and purposes, incapable of absorption. AVhile live bone--and life should preserve against influences from without--is frequently largely dissolved, therefore such solution is more or less a vital act, not a mere passive yielding. Although I controvert the views of such a man as Billroth with very great diffidence, yet I cannot but think that he has been somewhat misled by two circumstances--by his view of the constitution of bone and by his method of investigation. He appears to me to separate, in a manner far too trenchant, the membranous and the osseous constitueuce of bone, to conceive bone as consisting of separate and isolated islands of solid tissue, dirided from each other by channels (Haversian), containing vessels and cellular tissue, which have nothing to do with the bony parts, save to convey nutriment to them. I cannot look upon bone in this wise; as elsewhere stated (Chapter I., p. 3) I consider the Haversian lining membrane to be continuous with the lacunae and canaliculi; that this branched structure is the unossified portion of a tissue, the other portions of which have received a deposit of lime-salts; that this non-calcified part of the bone, although it takes no part in the mechanical, the resisting and supporting function of the skeleton, is an essential constituent of bone as a living, growing, and self-nourishing part of the body. Could we destroy all this intricate mesh of cells and fibres the boue would be dead in a few minutes. Could we remove all the other, all the hard part without damaging this network, the bone would soon be reconstituted. Nor can I conceive that one little portion of the system--that, nmuely, which lines the Haversian canals, could b...
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