| OCR Text |
Show 1883.] MR. J. B. SUTTON ON THE DISEASES OF MONKEYS. 585 so marked a feature in mollities ossium in human beings may result from a similar condition of the spinal column. The principal cause of rickets in Monkeys is the fact that many of them are captured when quite young, and in lieu of the breast-milk of the mother are fed on fruits, rice, and cows' milk. It may be mentioned here that the Royal College of Surgeons possesses a Hunterian preparation of a rickety Monkey. Fig. 1. Vertebra_of Pachyacanthus, showing the narrow spinal canal (after Gervais, I.e.). Fig. 2. Transverse section of tbe vertebral column with the cord in situ, to show the mode in which the cord gets compressed by overgrowth of the surrounding bone. From a Monkey. The Milk-white Patch. In conducting human post-mortems it is very usual to find on the anterior surface of the heart a thickening of the visceral layer of the pericardium, technically known as the " milk-white patch," concerning the causation of which pathologists have held two opposite notions. One opinion is that the thickened area is the result of chronic inflammation. The other and more probable view holds that it is due to pressure : this is called the " attrition " theory. |
