344 GENERAL ANATOMY. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OP THE CARTILAGES. 



539. The cartilages X6v5pot, are white, hard, flexible, very 

 elastic, brittle parts, apparently homogeneous, which form the 

 skeleton of the vertebrate animals lowest in the series, (the 

 chondropterygious fishes); which in the beginning of the life 

 of other vertebrate animals fulfil the functions of bones; some 

 of which remaining in the adult age, form parts which are 

 solid, hard, and flexible at the same time. 



540. The old anatomists and those of the Italian school, 

 disputed much respecting the matter which forms the bones 

 and cartilages, and about their differences; Galiardi and Ha- 

 vers in vain sought for this difference in the intimate texture 

 of the parts. More useful observations have been made in 

 the last century on the cartilaginous tissue. We are indebted 

 to Haase* for a very good dissertation on this subject; but 

 this anatomist, like several of those who preceded and fol- 

 lowed him, has confounded the condroid ligaments with the 

 cartilages, which renders his general description rather vague. 

 Bichat has separated from the other cartilages those which 

 are thin and very flexible, to form together with the cartila- 

 giniform ligaments, the fibro-cartilaginous system; but these 

 latter are in fact ligaments, and the former true cartilages. 



541. The cartilages are either temporary or permanent: 

 the former constantly, completely and regularly disappear at 

 a determinate period of their growth, and are replaced by the 

 bones; the latter remain a much longer time, and sometimes 

 more than a century, in the cartilaginous state; however, 



* J. G. Haase, de Fabrlca cartilaginum. Lips. 1767. 



