Rib cage

“ The Ribs are luxated either on the outside, or on the inside: If they be dislocated on the inside, a Cavity is perceiv'd near the Vertebra's, the Patient drawing his Breath with Pain, and not being able to bend his Body.
When the Luxation is on the outside, and happens in the upper Ribs, the Patient's Hands are to be hoisted upon the top of a Door, to raise up the Ribs, whilst the Surgeon presseth the Prominence of the Rib to restore it to its place. ”

“ In like manner, when the ribs are fractured, whether one or more, provided there be no splinters, there is rarely fever, spitting of blood, and sphacelus, and ordinary treatment without evacuation will suffice, provided there be no fever;-bandaging, according to rule; and the callus forms in twenty days, the bone being of a porous nature. But in cases of contusion, tubercles form, along with cough, suppurating sores, and sphacelus of the ribs, for nerves from all the parts run along each rib. ”

“ Suppose, now, you place your hands against your ribs and feel the ribs lift as you draw in a long breath. The air will be sucked into your nose just as it was into the bellows when you raised the handle. By lifting your ribs, you have made the chest-cage larger; and the air has rushed into your nose, down your windpipe, and filled your lungs. If you breathe very deeply, you will find that your stomach, too, 43swells out. This shows that the muscular bottom of the cage, called the diaphragm, has been pulled down, making the cage larger still. ”

“ The back-ribs make an excellent roast; indeed, there is not a sweeter or more varied one in the whole carcass, having both ribs and shoulder. The shoulder-blade eats best cold, and the ribs, warm. The ribs make excellent chops, the Leicester and South-Down affording the best. The breast is mostly a roasting-piece, consisting of rib and shoulder, and is particularly good when cold. When the piece is large, as of the South-Down or Cheviot, the gristly parts of the ribs may be divided from the true ribs, and helped separately. ”

“ Cannot ride or take any exercise because it brings on the pain. The cicatrix shows a large, deep hole, and the deficiency of the rib is well marked. The side of the chest is altogether contracted and flatter; the heart has been moved behind the sternum; the beat of the apex being on the other side of the xiphoid cartilage, and that of the heart, as a whole, is more indistinct than usual. In other ways in good health. It is possible that the ball may be lodged in or be retained by layers of coagulable lymph in the angle formed between the diaphragm, the ribs, and the spine. ”

“ These true sacrals alone are connected with the ilium by processes which are really equivalent to modified ribs; but the pelvis of birds extends considerably farther forwards and backwards, gradually coming into contact with other vertebrae, which in various ways send out connecting transverse processes or buttresses, and thus become pre- and post-sacral vertebrae (fig. 9) . The most anterior part of the ilium often overlaps one or more short lumbar ribs and fuses with them, or even a long, complete thoracic rib. ”

“ Strictly speaking, single-headed ribs are those which have lost either the head or the tubercle.
Fig. 87. Dorsal vertebra of Thalattosaurus. (After Merriam.) This early mode of articulation of double-headed ribs, the head across the intervertebral cartilage, the tubercle to the diapophysis of the arch, has continued through those reptiles [see above] and through the mammals. And this is essentially the mode of rib articulation in the Diaptosauria. ”

“ The three ribs at the stern cannot be put in whole, and will require a certain amount of scheming to make them bend and fit in their proper places. The ends of the ribs must be cut off level with the top laths. The screws which hold the rib ends to the top lath are only temporary, for, after the canvas has been stretched on, and the gunwales screwed into their places they must be removed, and longer and stronger ones driven through rib, lath, and canvas into the gunwales. ”

“ In tracks crossing the chest transversely the injury to the ribs might consist in notching, perforation, or complete solution of continuity, sometimes with fine comminution. In the incomplete injuries some importance attached to the localisation of the lesion to the upper or lower border of the rib, in so far as the intercostal artery was concerned. Comminution at the wound of entry was, as a rule, not so extensive as at the aperture of exit, and in any case was less apparent, since the fragments were driven inward. ”

“ Then cut through the muscles connecting the front of the breastbone with the neck and its hinder end with the belly, and pull out the entire breastbone. Having torn out the heart and lungs with the hand, make the rib cartilages on the one side overlap those on the other, so as to lessen the thickness of the chest, and proceed to extract the body. If it seems needful to empty the abdomen as well, it is easy to reach it by cutting through the diaphragm, which separates it from the chest. ”

“ They lay beneath the mighty ribs as in a cage, of which the intercostal spaces were a foot in width, and the bars of a strength to maintain the enormous pressure of that which had surrounded and entombed them; they lay in one close group, their naked limbs smeared with the stain of their prison—a man, a woman, and a tiny child. ”

“ It is very surprising to feel the difference of these ribs when open and when closed; for closed, they are as pliable as the finest whale-bone, or more so; but, when extended, are as strong and stiff as a bone. They are tapering from the roots, and are broader or narrower, as best suits the places they occupy, and the stress they are put to, up to their points, which are almost as small as a hair. The membrane between them is the most elastic thing I ever met with, occupying no more space, when the ribs are closed, than just from rib to rib, as flat and smooth as possible ”

“ Location.—The ribs form the lateral bony wall of the thorax, articulating superiorly with the dorsal vertebræ.
Description.—The ribs are arranged in order of length, the ultimate rib being the longest. From anterior to posterior, they approach more nearly a horizontal position. The ribs are divided into the true and the false. The true ribs articulate with the sternum. The false ribs do not touch the sternum; they are floating. The true ribs are composed of two parts, a vertebral, or dorsal, and a sternal, 42or ventral. ”

“ If a foot should be bruised or broken, he advises that the diseased bird should be shut up in a very small cage, the bottom of which is very smooth and even, without any perches, or anything which would tempt them to hop, and put in a very quiet and solitary place, out of the way of anything which might produce agitation. ”

“ Congenital, arrest of development and of closure of foramen or elsewhere, diaphragm absent. Traumatic, blows on false ribs by pole, shaft, buffer, gate, bars, beams, kicks, blows with horns, tusks, clubs, fractured rib perforating diaphragm, falls on projecting bodies, muscular strains in draught, plunging, falling, slipping, casting, parturition; trotting or galloping down hill, jumping to lower level, slipping to knees, dystokia, colic, tympany. Symptoms: extreme dyspnœa and asphyxia ”

“ In some cases there is just the suspicion of a limp with one limb, and this only at intervals during the trot. At one moment the veterinarian is positive that he sees the animal going lame; at another he is just as confident he sees him coming towards him sound.
Nothing is found in the limb—neither heat, tenderness, nor swelling. There is nothing in the gait (either a limited movement of the radius, or a circular sweep with the leg) to indicate shoulder or other lameness, and the veterinary surgeon, by eliminative evidence, is bound to conclude that the trouble is in the foot. ”

“ When there is plenty of space, as on the abdomen, chest, or back, and it is designed to use great number, they may be confined by an inverted tumbler or a wire-gauze cage. They should not, however, be crowded too closely together, as erysipelatous inflammation is apt to arise when this is done; and they ought not to be touched until they drop off of their own accord. If they remain on too long, their separation may be facilitated by sprinkling them with a little salt or vinegar: pulling them away is painful and liable to occasion irritable sores. ”

“ As regards treatment, a tightly fitting steel cage-like splint, which, gripping the thigh and leg, limits the movements of the knee to flexion and extension, may prove useful. But for a muscular, athletic individual the wearing of this apparatus may prove vexatious and disappointing. The only alternative is to open the joint and remove the loose cartilage. The cartilage may be found on operation to be split, torn or crumpled, and lying right across between the joint-surfaces of the bones, from which nothing but an operation could possibly have removed it. ”

“ If the effusion increases until it reaches as high as the second rib, the respiratory movements are scarcely perceptible to the eye. When it reaches its maximum, the clavicle, they appear to be arrested, but the vertical diameter is slightly altered by the action of the intercostal muscles as they endeavor to elevate the ribs, and of the diaphragm as it feebly contracts and relaxes. The pleural cavity, which in health is lubricated by about two drachms of moist serous secretion, is frequently filled to the extent of seventy, eighty, or more—even to one hundred and twenty—ounces. ”

“ The same looseness of articulation is also found in the ribs of aquatic animals. In most animals, and in all those which walk erect, like the mammals, each rib is firmly attached to the backbone by two distinct joints, the head and tubercle, with an interval between them. This double attachment prevents much in-and-out movement of the ribs and gives a firm support for the attachment of the muscles of respiration, as well as for those supporting the viscera. ”

“ Abdominal ribs are few in number and are very thin. The true ribs possess capitula and tubercula; those of the neck are very short and directed backwards; in the thoracic region they are long, and some are attached to a broad sternum with a keel and a median anterior process, on the sides of which latter articulate the coracoids. Precoracoids and clavicles are absent. The scapulae are long, sabre-shaped, and turned back as in birds; in Pteranodon they show the unique modification of articulating with special processes of the neural arches of several ankylosed thoracic vertebrae. ”

“ It is more dangerous when due to a direct blow or injury, as then the splintering occurs internally and may wound the lungs, heart, or large vessels, while with fracture from indirect violence, from compression of the chest, the splintering of the ribs occurs externally. Fracture of the upper ribs requires more force than that required to fracture the lower ones, and consequently the former is the more dangerous. The diagnosis of fracture of the ribs is generally quite easy by means of crepitus felt or heard, false motion, local tenderness, etc. ”

“ If the ball have broken a rib, the orifice of entrance especially should be enlarged as early and as carefully as possible, so as to give an opportunity for the removal of the splinters and of all angular points of bone which may be turned inward. A little addition to the original opening can do no harm, and if the lung should not collapse, or should it be adherent, it will enable the surgeon to see whether any splinters are impacted in it, and to remove them. ”

“ This last rib, when shut, flaps under the upper one, and also falls down with it before to the waist, but is not joined to the ribs below. Along the whole spine-bone runs a strong, flat, broad, grisly cartilage, to which are joined several other of these ribs; all which open horizontally, and are filled in the interstices with the above membrane, and are jointed to the ribs of the person just where the plane of the back begins to turn towards the breast and belly; and, when shut, wrap the body round to the joints on the contrary side, folding neatly one side over the other. ”

“ The character of the lameness may enable us to locate the seat of the disease. We must first determine in which limb the animal is lame. This part of the diagnosis is not difficult. The pain suffered every time weight is thrown on the diseased limb causes the horse to step quickly and shift as much of the body weight as possible on the well foot. The foot of the lame limb is jerked up rather quickly after weight is thrown on it. This favoring of the part varies in the different diseases. When the foot of the sound limb comes to the ground, more weight than common is placed on it. ”

“ In the larger animals this may come from blows on the last ribs, by poles or shafts of carriages, the 361buffers of cars, the end of a gate and the gatepost, projecting ends of bars or beams against which they run, kicks by horse or ox, blows by the horns of cattle or tusks of boars. In the smaller animals in addition to the above, blows with heavy clubs and kicks with heavy boots. In all such cases there is usually a fracture of one or more ribs, the sharp broken ends of which are forced into the diaphragm, which they tear when they again spring outward. ”

“ The cervical vertebrae have no ribs, except mere traces in the shape of small nodules. On the tail the ribs are often large, and, when fused with their neural supports, look like transverse processes; the whole arrangement exactly resembles that of Crocodilia. The first pair of thoracic ribs, those borne by the ninth vertebra, are peculiar. They arise from the anterior portion of the centrum, are much reduced, sometimes to mere threads of bone, and lean against the anterior rim of the second pair of ribs, in many cases without reaching the carapace. ”