Unpublished paper, 'On the anatomy and physiology of the vascular fringes in joints, and the sheaths of tendons' by G [George] Rainey

Description

Rainey traces the presence of the synovial fringes in all cavities which contain synovia; that is to say, not only in the joints, but also in the sheaths of tendons, and in the bursæ mucosae. When well-injected, they are seen, under the microscope, to consist of two parts: a convolution of blood-vessels, and an investing epithelium. These convoluted vessels do not enclose, by their anastomoses, spaces like those capillaries which secrete fat, and which are of a much smaller size than the former; and the epithelial investments, besides enclosing separately each packet of convoluted vessels, sends off from each tubular sheath secondary processes of various shapes, into which no blood-vessels enter. The lamina itself, forming these folds and processes, consists of a very thin membrane studded with flattish oval cells, a little larger than blood-corpuscles, but destitute of nucleus or nucleoli; presenting none of the characters of tessellated epithelium, but corresponding more to what Mr. Goodsir has termed germinal membrane. Rainey concludes that the proper office of this structure is to secrete synovia; an office which Clopton Havers had assigned to them as long ago as the year 1691, although his opinion has not been generally adopted by later physiologists.

Subject: Anatomy / Physiology

26 February 1846. Communicated by John Simon.

An abstract of the paper was published in volume 5 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'On the anatomy and physiology of the vascular fringes in joints, and the sheaths of tendons'.

Reference number

AP/28/17

Earliest possible date

February 1846

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

12 pages

Format

Manuscript