488 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1720. 



out of 10 subjects he had an opportunity to examine, not one proved to be in 

 that manner, the body of the vertebrae being entire, and the acute processes 

 only divided. 



The spine now treated of comes near this description. It was that of a 

 female infant 6 days old ; whose mother, when 7 weeks gone with child, on a 

 fright occasioned by her husband's falling from a horse and very much bruising 

 his loins, gave the embryo this injury; but notwithstanding, she went out her 

 time, and the child was full grown. 



There appeared on the region of the loins, in the same place where the 

 father received his hurt, a tumor about the size of a small turnip, with a broad 

 basis, around which the skin was discoloured, as by an ecchymosis, but it grew 

 immediately from thence pellucid, like a vesicle raised by cantharides, and con- 

 tinued so throughout, except just at its apex, where was a substance like a 

 fungus. This vesicle was filled with a liquor, which in scent and colour re- 

 sembled urine: insomuch, that on strictly examining the linen stained by what 

 issued from hence, with that from the pudenda, we could perceive no sensible 

 difference, and concluded there was a communication between the left kidney 

 and the orifice, into which the surgeon's probe passed obliquely upwards about 

 an inch. On opening the body, the kidneys, contrary to expectation, were 

 perfect, and did not any way communicate with the outward orifice. 



But on clearing away the fungous substance, which took up all the sulcus or 

 hollow of the spine, we found where the perforation tended ; a long probe 

 easily passing up the channel, which contains the medulla spinalis. Through- 

 out this fungus were dispersed a great many terminations of small nerves, from 

 whence distilled this seeming urinous liquor, which occasioned the tumor : the 

 rest of the medulla was more compact, and filled the cavity of the spine; 

 though in some subjects it has been wasted to such a degree, that by blowing 

 into the orifice, the dura mater may be inflated. The coat of the tumor con- 

 sisted at its basis of the cuticula, cutis, and membrana adiposa: the first two of 

 which presently terminating, the cuticula only was continued; immediately 

 under which appeared the muscles and fungus abovementioned. 



These tumors constantly attend the spina bifida : so that when any of them 

 present themselves on the loins or back of a new-born infant, we may pro- 

 nounce this to be cause ; but we may be positive in it, if the child cannot move 

 its lower limbs; the want of which motion is an infallible indication, that the 

 medulla spinalis reaches no farther than the swelling, by which the nerves are 

 not distributed to those parts. They appear differently in different subjects. 

 In some the whole tumor is opaque ; which proceeds from small filaments of 

 nerves propagated in great numbers throughout its coat, and not from the 



