VOL. XXIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 263 



dispersed through the fibrous substance of the human spleen. The subject I 

 found them in, was a boy of about 4 or 5 years old, who died of a general 

 atrophy, or consumption of all the muscular fleshy parts of the body, occa- 

 sioned from the numerous glandulous swellings scattered up and down the 

 whole mesentery; which by compressing the lymphatic vessels, called in this 

 place vasa lactea, prevented the access and supply of the chyle, so necessary 

 for the continued nourishment and increase of the parts. For without the 

 constant recruit of this whitish balsamic liquor, the mass of blood will in a 

 short time be unfit to perform any of those good offices, which a fresh accession 

 of chyle qualifies it for. 



In a piece of this spleen might be seen, without the assistance of a glass, 

 several round whitish bodies, of a pretty hard consistence, and abundance of 

 small white and softer specks; but both of the same nature. These, to me at 

 least, appear to be so many distinct glands become visible; which in a natural 

 state are only to be seen by a fine glass, as the curious Malpighius first observed. 

 Vid. his Treatise de Liene, Cap. V. 



The second observation. We had still been in the dark about the nature of 

 a luxation of the head of the thigh bone, had we not carefully examined the 

 part in the dead body. For by that sort of inquiry, the common mistake of 

 surgeons was detected, and what was esteemed and treated by them as a luxa- 

 tion of the head of the femur, was discovered to be nothing else but a frac- 

 ture of the same bone, near its neck ; the globular head being still retained 

 close in its own socket, called the acetabulum coxendicis. 



Among all the writers of surgery and anatomy, I know of only three that 

 were apprised of this mistake: the first was Ambrose Paree, the second Dr. 

 Ruysch at Amsterdam, and Mr. Cheselden, a member of the Royal Society; 

 whose observations on this subject I intend to communicate at another time, 

 with an account of the true structure of this joint ; in which I will consider 

 the depth of the articulation ; the wonderful strength of the muscles that sur- 

 round it ; the many strong ligaments that bind the head within the socket ; 

 the smallness of the neck of the bone ; its porous and spongy substance, 

 which makes it much weaker than the rest; and lastly, the disadvantageous 

 oblique position of this neck, which exposes it the more to outward accidents. 

 From a review of such like considerations, it will plainly appear that a fracture 

 can much more easily happen, than a dislocation in that part from an external 

 cause. 



This OS femoris belonged to an old woman turned of fourscore, who only 

 fell from her chair, and thence suffered this breach of continuity in the sub- 

 stance of the bone. She lived 3 weeks after it ; and though it never was re- 



