Pathological observations on the rotated or contorted spine, commonly called lateral curvature - Softcover
Synopsis
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.1824 Excerpt: ... natural and healthy condition, and enabled, through the vigour imparted to them, to support the drooping body. PART II. ON THE CURE OF THE ROTATED OR CONTORTED SPINE. The differences of opinion which have existed amongst medical men in every succeeding age up to the present period, respecting the pathology of this interesting and dreadful deformity, is the reason that so many and opposite modes of practice have been at different times recommended for its cure: each being suited to the particular notions of its respective author. But laying aside the more hypothetical of these opinions, the great struggle, at present, respecting the proper method of cure, seems to lie between those who suppose it to depend upon muscular contraction, and those who suppose it to proceed from structural disease of the vertebras, centring in the manner in which the apparent opposite curvatures of the spine are supposed to be produced; the one party not being able to get rid, altogether, of structural disease, while the other cannot exclude from their premises muscular contraction. This is the difficulty which has hitherto presented itself; but which I have now surmounted, I hope, upon philosophical, as well as anatomical principles:--shewing, that what have been all along considered curvatures of the spinal column, is but a changed aspect of its natural flexures, which are-brought into profile, or rather semi-profile, by the aggregate rotatory movement of the vertebrae upon each other; the consequence of the permanent contraction of the muscles that move them, produced by mal-position. And that, therefore, medical men have been striving all along to account for what does not exist; the whole being a visual as well as a manual deception. In consequence of this deception, those wh...
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