Bone ash

“ By steeping a piece of bone in a dilute acid solution, the inorganic portion of the bone is dissolved out, and the organic portion, which forms the framework of the bone, is alone left. On the other hand, by submitting a bone to the action of great heat, the organic portion of the bone is driven off, and all that remains is a quantity of ash. The proportion of the organic to the inorganic matter varies considerably in different bones. The bones of young animals contain more organic matter than those of old animals. In compact bones, also, the organic matter is greater than in spongy bones. ”

“ Bones being less subject to putrefaction than skin-stock, they are not brought into commerce in a prepared state. They are mainly bought by contract from various dealers within easy access to the works. The rates are generally fixed for a certain period, and cover all classes of common bones, whether fresh butchers’ or a mixture with partly boiled bones. Bones differ considerably in their value. A fresh bone will yield the highest percentage of fat and glue. On the other hand, partly boiled bones may contain only 6 per cent. fat with 30 per cent. ”

“ The theory that the increased brittleness of human bones with advancing years is the result of an increased percentage of inorganic salts, is contradicted by the experiments of Mr. Mason. From determinations of the ash in bones of fifty subjects of different ages, he has found that after reaching manhood no variation in the quantity of ash takes place with increasing age. ”

“ The elements which bear no direct relation to the force production of the body, but which enter into tissue formation, are chlorine, sulphur, iron, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, calcium and magnesium. Bone tissue contains about 50 per cent. of lime phosphate, hence the need of this substance in the food of a growing infant, in order that the bones may become firm and strong. Lack of iron salts in the food impoverishes the coloring matter of the red blood corpuscles on which they depend for their power of carrying oxygen to the tissues; anæmia and other disorders of deficient oxidation result. ”

“ To the latter we look for our yield of glue; to the fatty matter for the fat, and to the phosphates for the basis of fertilizers.
Bone cartilage is composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, the percentage composition being practically constant, whether the cartilage be from an old or a young animal. The bones of the young are, however, much richer in cartilage than those of the old. This is reversed in the case of the inorganic or mineral matter, the old having the greatest yield of phosphates. ”

“ With the advance of age it accumulates, and the bone becomes hard, inelastic, and capable of supporting heavy weights. Farther on, as in old age, the animal matter of bone becomes diminished, and lime takes its place, so that the bones become brittle and are easily broken. Lime exists largely in hard water, and to a greater or less extent in milk, and in nearly all foods except those of an acid character.
Phosphorus exists in various combinations in different parts of the body, particularly in the brain and nervous system. ”

“ Solidity and hardness are their peculiar portion; they derive these properties from the phosphate of lime which penetrates them, thus they are constantly increasing with age, because this substance becomes more and more predominant. Elasticity is another physical property of the bones, which is found combined with the two preceding, but which is in an inverse order; as it is in the gelatinous substance, in the cartilaginous portion of the bone that it resides, it is, like this portion, greater in childhood. In old age, the bones lose entirely their suppleness and elasticity ”

“ Corresponding bones of a recent human skeleton accompanied the exhumed remains. The following is Dr. Flight’s "Report":—
"The bone is considerably altered in appearance and character; it is of a fine dark brown colour, and is readily reduced to a powder in an iron mortar. When heated, water and only oily matter are evolved, and it turns black or nearly so; treated with soda-lime, a large quantity of ammonia is given off. The density of the bone is 2⋅138, that of the recent tibia was found to be 1⋅985. ”

“ Steamed Bone.—When animal bone is boiled or steamed under pressure for removal of the fat and the cartilage, the content of nitrogen is reduced, and the percentage of phosphoric acid is increased by this removal of fat and nitrogenous substance. The nitrogen in steamed bone may run as low as 1 per cent, and the phosphoric acid may go up to 30 per cent. The composition of steamed bone is so widely variable that the name means little, and purchase should be made only on guaranteed analysis. ”

“ The state of the osseous system and the condition and number of the teeth, which strictly speaking are not bone, are among the surest guides in the determination of age. The signs furnished thereby may vary according to the periods of increase, maturity, and decline.
During fœtal life and even at the epoch of birth the bone centres are few. The distal end of the femur, the proximal end of the tibia, and the astragalus are ossified at birth. Points of ossification appear in successive order of development. ”

“ After wood and skin and hair and teeth are once grown, all we can do is to protect them. Really to affect their growth for good or ill, we have to do something to the growing end.
The bones also grow in spots. The child’s leg bones and arm bones and finger bones do not simply swell up to become the man’s. The head of each bone, the rounding end, that is, where it touches the next, grows on the outside. But the shaft does its growing chiefly at two spots, one at each end where the shaft joins the head. ”

“ The interment consisted of a quantity of calcined human bones, which lay upon a thin layer of earth at the bottom of the hole, as compactly as if they had at first been deposited within a shallow basket or similar perishable vessel. Upon them lay some fragments of iron, part of two bone combs, and twenty-eight convex objects of bone, like button-moulds.
“The pieces of iron have been attached to some article of perishable material; the largest fragment has a good-sized loop, as if for suspension. ”

“ In buying bones the manufacturer should exercise great care, as the dealer sometimes finds ways and means of including hoofs, horns, iron, beefy matter, and even pieces of brick. Naturally they form weight, but, excepting the horns, have no value.
To separate the different classes of bone coming into the33 works, and arrange them according to the amounts they would produce of fat and glue, is no doubt a desirable object, but in practice it is seldom carried out. ”

“ A young growing animal, whether a child or a colt, that is kept on food which lacks bone-earth, (phosphate of lime,) will have soft cartilaginous bones. Nature cannot substitute iron or any other mineral in the animal system, out of which to form hard strong bones; nor can any other mineral in the soil perform the peculiar function assigned to silica in the vital economy of cereal plants. To protect the living germs in the seeds of wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, &c. the cuticle or bran of these seeds contains considerable flint. ”

“ Raw Bone.—Stable manure lasts several years in the soil because decay is slow. Raw bone has appealed to many because its action is likewise necessarily slow. The fat in it prevents fine grinding and protects the coarse particles from decay. It is known as bone-meal or coarse ground-bone. A good quality of raw bone may contain 4 per cent of nitrogen, while the phosphoric-acid content is 20 to 25 per cent. The bones of old animals is less rich in nitrogen. ”

“ Lime enters largely into the formation of bone, either as a phosphate or a carbonate, and is required in much greater quantities in early life, while the bone is undergoing development, than afterwards. In childhood the bones are composed largely of animal matter, being pliable and easily moulded. For this reason the limbs of young children bend under the weight of their bodies, and unless care is taken they become bow-legged and distorted. Whenever there is a continued deficiency of the earthy constituents, disease of the bones ensues. ”

“ Such bones would be no use as a framework to support the body. The bones of very old persons get too much like this, and we are afraid to have such people fall. The burned bone needs something to hold it together—a connective tissue. Such a tissue was in the spaces before the bone was burned.
Show the bone after it has been prepared in an acid solution, with only the connective tissue left. Explain how it was prepared. Bend it to show its pliability. To be of use in the body it needs some substance to make it hard and rigid—the mineral matter which was dissolved out. ”

“ The ossification of the bones on the sides and upper part of the skull, for example, begins by a rounded spot in the middle of each one. From this spot the ossification extends outward in every direction, thus gradually approaching the edges of the bone. When two adjacent bones meet, there will be a line where their edges are in contact with each other, but have not yet united ”

“ If, for any reason, either of these ingredients is disproportionate in the bone during life, the body is in danger. The lime is useful in giving rigidity of form, while the animal substance insures toughness and elasticity. By their union, we are able to withstand greater shocks and heavier falls than would be possible with either alone. In youth, the period of greatest activity, the animal constituent is in excess: a bone then does not break so readily, but, when broken, unites with great rapidity and strength. ”

“ What are the means proper to be us'd in a simple Dislocation?
A speedy and simple reducing thereof, which is perform'd by stretching out the dislocated or luxated Member, and thrusting back the Head of the Bone into its natural place. Afterward the Joynt must be strengthen'd with a Fomentation made with Provence Roses, the Leaves of Wormwood, Rosemary, Camomile, St. John's-Wort, and Oak-Moss boil'd in the Lees of Wine and Forge-Water, keeping the Part well bound up, and sustain'd in a convenient situation. ”

“ If you soak a bone in a kind of acid, the earthy matter will come out, and it will then be so soft you can tie it in a knot like this. When children are very young, their bones are soft and easily bent. This is because there is more animal than earthy matter. Children sometimes get hard falls, and their bones bend but do not break. Some, when very young, have legs that are bent like a bow. This is caused by standing and walking before the bones are strong enough to bear the weight of the body, or by disease. ”

“ Others, being of a more loose and spongy texture, have been called cancellated. These are commonly formed by the bones of the extremities, and often attain a very considerable size; they grow from the periosteum, or from the outer surface of the bone, and are then covered by an expansion of this membrane. Sometimes they adhere by a narrow neck, and expand into a bulbous form, so that they can be very readily removed by operation, and are very apt to be broken off by external injury. ”

“ The term calcification is more correctly applied to the presence of the salts in normal tissues other than bone, or in the products of disease not simulating bone-cartilage in structure. A pathological ossification is to be considered present when an actual new formation of bone has taken place so limited and so situated as not to suggest a tumor of bone, or when the calcium salts are deposited in a new-formed tissue whose structure stimulates that of bone-cartilage. ”

“ The broken extremities of the bones become intimately united by bony matter passing from one to the other. The mass of new bone on the outside, formed by the ossification of the callus, being no longer wanted, is absorbed; by degrees the whole of it disappears, and the bone is left having the same dimensions which it had before the occurrence of the accident.
The process of union is completed in young persons sooner than in those advanced in life; in the upper extremities sooner than in the lower; and in smaller animals more speedily than in man. ”

“ In superficial bones, such as the tibia, there is enlargement, and it may be possible to recognise egg-shell crackling, or unequal consistence of the bone, which is hard in some parts, and doughy and elastic in others. The disease may pursue an indolent course during months or years until some complication occurs, such as suppuration or fracture. ”

“ A bone would become a muscle, if, without changing its texture at all, nature had imparted to it the faculty of secreting fibrin, and of encrusting itself with it, instead of separating the phosphate of lime and being penetrated with it. But the serous system does not appear to have in it a distinct nutritive matter, and consequently a peculiar texture. ”

“ And when a bone is broken as the result of accident, these little cells do the mending. While the Osteoblasts are bone-formers, the Osteoclasts are bone-destroyers. It is very curious that little specks of living jelly, like these Osteoclasts, should have the power of destroying hard tissue like bone, but such is the fact. These Osteoclasts can, by their wonderful chemical processes, liquefy and absorb, and by these means destroy, ivory pegs that are driven into living bone. ”

“ Lining the medullary and cancellous cavities is a delicate connective tissue lining, the endosteum, which contains many bone-forming cells, while on the outside of the bone, except at the articular ends, is the periosteum with its outer protective layer and its inner vascular layer containing osteoblasts or bone-forming cells. The periosteum is essential for the growth of new bone where the old bone has died, and if the periosteum is removed from healthy bone the part beneath is liable to die, as it is by the constant growth of the osteoblasts that the bone grows and is renewed. ”