34 
9 
A Description of all the 
Se£l. Vi I. 
X 
That ligaments in a found ftate have little fenfibility, appears in the firft 
place from the inconfiderable pain which often attends the luxation of bones. 
In which cafe, however, it may be proved, from a variety of circumflances, 
that the ligaments are lacerated ; but particularly becaufe I. found, by various 
experiments which I made on the human body fo long ago as the year i754> 
and mentioned fince that time in my ledures, that it is impolTible, even in 
children, to diflocate the humerus, which is loofely articulated, without lace- 
ration of its capfular ligament, although the joint be previoufly relaxed by 
foaking it in tepid water. 
This fad of the fmall fenfibility of ligaments is dill more clearly proved 
by the experiments of Dr Haller ; who, in living animals, not only pundured 
a 
the ligaments, but after doing fo poured oil of vitriol and other cauftic fub- 
ftances into the cavities of the joints, without giving fuch pain to the animals 
as produced a fenfible expreflion of it. To which we may add, that in a few 
Qperations in which, after extrading cartilaginous bodies from the cavity of 
the joint of the knee, the member was kept at reft and the wound carefully 
drelTed, the wound clofed without giving pain (§'), 
On the other hand, we may not only obferve violent pain produced in the 
joints, by white fwelling, gout, and rheumatifm, but where wounds have acci- 
dentally penetrated into the cavities of the joints, ov been made with the inten- 
tion of evacuating water, or of extrading fuch cartilaginous bodies, if the 
wound has not been properly clofed, and the joint reftrained from motion, a 
very confiderable and painful fwelling of the whole joint has enfued ; which 
in 
feftion ; but in fbme few places nerves can be traced into ligaments, and particularly at the back 
part of the wrift, I find in all fubjedls a nerve adhering to the outer fide of the ligament, which I 
have delineated in Tab. XXVI. of my work on the Striuaure and Fundlions of the Nervous Syftem. 
(q) Fer hlin Obf. Ph. Med. Dr D. Monro on Dropfy, p.170. Two cartilaginous bo- 
dies, one of which is in my poflelfion, and delineated in Tab. IX. fig. i. and 2. were cut at diffe- 
rent times, to wit, in 17 and 1778, from the joint of the fame knee, by Mr W. Inglis and Mr F. 
Dewar, furgeons in Edinburgh. 
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