Increasing instability of the knee developed in a 27-year-old man who had torn his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) approximately 10 years prior to surgical intervention. After initial conservative treatment, including use of a functional brace for activity, the patient opted for surgical reconstruction with a patellar tendon graft. One of the authors conducted three preoperative examinations t...

On July I3, 1951 a healthy young man of 27 fell to the pavement from a height of 40 ft. He suffered multiple injuries, of which the most serious were crush fractures of several vertebrae in the lumbo-dorsal area, and an associated partial cauda equina lesion. He was unable to pass urine, so intermittent catheterisation was employed for a few days followed by tidal drainage through an indwelling...

Pathological cavitation of the spinal cord was first called “ syringomyelia “ by Ollivier in 1837. He did not distinguish between cysts and central canal dilation, because the canal was not recognised as a normal structure until 1859. The first known description of the clinical signs was that of Duchenne (1872), though he called it progressive muscular atrophy. Schultze (1882) correlated the pa...

Tramadol is a centrally acting analgesic with μ-opioid, monoaminergic, and local anesthetic effects. In view of the involvement of the opioid and monoaminergic systems in pain pathways, the study was conducted to evaluate tramadol as an epidural analgesic in dogs. Ten healthy adult dogs (mean ± SEM body weight = 17.3 ± 3.8 kg) were premedicated with acepromazine (0.05 mg/kg, IM), induced with t...

CASE REPORT A Yoruba schoolboy of sixteen was first seen in April 1962, having suffered from fever and pain ill the low back and the left hip for three weeks. He was thin but did not look ill. He was able to stand unaided, but his back had lost the normal lumbar curve and was held rigid. Percussion of the lumbo-sacral area caused pain and the erector spinae muscles were tender. Three weeks late...