152 THE KNEE-JOINT. 



membrane enclosing fat, so frequently met with in the 

 joints, act " as movable stuffing pads which not only 

 smear the synovia over the opposite cartilaginous 

 surface, but steady the movements of the joints by 

 passing into the spaces left between the surfaces during 

 action. " Another notion of G-oodsir's was that the 

 movements of the joints were of a spiral character. 

 In the knee-joint, to which he devoted much attention, 

 he regarded the combined gliding and rolling move- 

 ments of flexion and extension, as performed between 

 two conical double-threaded screw-combinations, an 

 anterior and a posterior — the anterior being a left- 

 handed screw, and the posterior a right-handed screw 

 in the right knee-joint ; the anterior a right-handed and 

 the posterior a left-handed screw in the left knee-joint. 

 He acknowledged his obligations to Meyer's labours, 

 and gave a larger interpretation to the anatomy and 

 mechanism of the joints than the German had done, 

 and showed that the history of these important struc- 

 tures still afforded abundant room for inquiry. 



The numerous interesting observations made by H. 

 Muller, Corti, Kolliker, Rudolf, Wagner, and others, a 

 good many years ago, on the termination of the nerves 

 both peripherally and centrally,"" the discovery of the 



* The writer may be pardoned for alluding to his own observations in the 

 same direction, and his discovery of the loopdike termination of the nerve- 

 fibres, medullary and cerebral. Vide Edinburgh Medical and Surgical 

 Journal, vol. 60 p. 324, October 1843 (Dr. Lonsdale's " History of a Case of 

 Monstrosity "), where will be found a general reference to the labours of the 

 French and German anatomists who had investigated the minute anatomy of 

 the nerve-structures. 



