Bone

“ We may well reckon up Fifteen distinct Parts, which are the Bone, the Cartilage, the Ligament, the Tendon, the Membrane, the Fibre, the Nerve, the Vein, the Artery, the Flesh, the Fat, the Skin, the Scarf-Skin, the Hair, and the Nails.
What is a Bone?
It is the hardest and driest Part of the whole Body, and that which constitutes its principal Support. ”

“ Bone.—Bone is a hard unyielding structure, and which in the vertebrata forms the skeleton of the adult. It is the framework for the support of the soft tissues of the body, and forms various cavities for the reception of important organs, as the brain, spinal cord, eyes, heart and lungs, and acts as levers for the action of the muscles and joints. The partial elasticity of bone is seen in the ribs, and the rebound when the skull is dropped on the ground. Bone consists of earthy and animal matters intimately combined ”

“ I have taken the sternum bone from a dead man’s chest, analyzed it, then brought together similar elements, placed them in a mould, and I have produced a bone which was just as real as the one with which I started. ”

“ The body is made up of skin and bone, as well as flesh and blood. The bones constitute the frame-work of the body; but for them we could not stand erect and move about. They protect the softer parts of the body. Thus the skull gives protection to the brain, while the ribs protect the heart and the lungs. Doctors have counted 238 bones in the human body. The outside of the bones is hard, but the inside is soft and hollow. Where there is a joint between two bones, there is a coating of marrow, which may be regarded as a soft bone. The teeth, too, are to be counted among the bones. ”

“ And all the while the burning lime Eats flesh and bone away, It eats the brittle bone by night, And the soft flesh by the day, It eats the flesh and bones by turns, But it eats the heart alway. ”

“ Bone essentially surrounds the nervous mass. The skull environs and incloses the brain, the vertebræ the spinal cord, the ribs, the visceral nerves the snail's shell all the soft parts of that animal, the coral stem its polyp-tube, the horny coat the insect.
1832. The purest and highest antagonisms in an animal are nerve and bone, and as such they are demonstrated on every occasion. The nerve is that which is soft, powerless, changeable, sentient, governing, and motion-imparting; the bone, what is hard, strong, unchangeable, non-sentient, governed, and becoming moved ”

“ Bone.—In bone the intercellular tissue is rendered hard by the deposit of mineral salts, the resulting material being of great strength and rigidity. The texture may be close and dense like ivory or open and spongy, the difference lying merely in the fact that the one has fewer spaces between the solid particles than the other. ”

“ They are merely the expression of a great consistent system, and are in architecture what is often found in animal anatomy,—a bone, or process of a bone, useless, under the ordained circumstances of its life, to the particular animal in which it is found, and slightly developed, but yet distinctly existent, and representing, for the sake of absolute consistency, the same bone in its appointed, and generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all animals, or in the genus to which the animal itself belongs. ”

“ The terms raw bone, fine bone, boiled and steamed bone, etc., are used to indicate methods of preparation, and inasmuch as bone is a material which is useful largely in proportion to its rate of decay, its fineness has an important bearing upon availability, since the finer the bone the more surface is exposed to the action of those forces which cause decay or solution, and the quicker will the constituents become available. ”

“ Again the bone, in its nascent stage, enters into the organic principle of bone, and there, by the inherent heat of that principle, is resolved into three factors, viz, its excreted portion goes towards the formation of hairs, mustaches, etc, its thick or condensed portion is assimilated into the organic principle of bone, and its subtile portion is metamorphosed into marrow. ”

“ Bones make the body stiff and strong, and give it shape. Long bones reach through the arms and legs, and little bones reach down the fingers and toes. Rounded plates of bone form the head, and a pile of bony rings makes up the backbone. Each bone is built to fit exactly into its own place and to do its own work. In all there are over two hundred bones in the body. ”

“ Bone and flesh come next to be explained. Both of them derive their origin from the spinal marrow: in which the bonds of life are fastened, and soul is linked with body — the root of the human race. The origin of the spinal marrow itself is special and exceptional. ”

“ The formation of bone is peculiarly instructive, because the large proportion of inorganic matter in its substance, and seemingly deposited in the organic tissue, would lead one to suppose that it was almost an accidental formation, which might take place anywhere; yet101 although what is called connective tissue will ossify under certain conditions, true bone is the product of a very peculiar modification, which almost always needs to be preceded by cartilage. ”

“ Let us now come, at last, to the mechanical structure of bone, of which we find a well-known and classical illustration in the various bones of the human leg. In the case of the tibia, the bone is somewhat widened out above, and its hollow shaft is capped by an almost flattened roof, on which the weight of the body directly rest. ”

“ The short, square, and flattened bones of the body, such as those of the wrist, the skull, and the hips, instead of being hollow inside are spongy; and the spaces in the bone-sponge are filled with a soft tissue called the red marrow in which new red and white corpuscles for the blood are born, to take the place of those which die and go to pieces. ”

“ The bones of my trunk are
my spine,
my ribs,
my breastbone,
my two shoulder blades,
and my two collar bones.
4. My upper arm has one bone; my fore-arm has two bones; my wrist has eight bones; from my wrist to my knuckles are five bones; my thumb has two bones; each finger has three bones, making nineteen bones in my hand.
5. My thigh has one bone; my lower leg has two bones; my knee-pan is the cap which covers and protects my knee; in my foot, near my heel, are seven bones; in the middle of my foot are five bones; my great toe has two bones; each of my other toes has three bones ”

“ Form of bones.—A bone is not like a solid piece of timber, but is hollow like the frame of a bicycle. This makes it strong and light. At its ends a bone is like a hard sponge covered with a firm shell. This makes it too strong to be easily crushed, and keeps it light.
A bone grows like any other part of the body. It is made of living cells like woven threads. Lime is mixed among the cells, and makes them stiff like starch among the threads of a linen collar. Blood tubes go through every part of the bone so as to [Pg 110] feed the cells. ”

“ Temporal bone, a very complex bone situated in the side of the skull of most mammals and containing the organ of hearing. It consists of an expanded squamosal portion above the ear, corresponding to the squamosal and zygoma of the lower vertebrates, and a thickened basal petrosal and mastoid portion, corresponding to the periotic and tympanic bones of the lower vertebrates. ”

“ The scattered human bones were all of them more or less broken, the breaking seeming to have been done when the bones were fresh. In one or two instances only were we able to find the different pieces of the same bone. ”

“ Let us first examine the skeleton. In youth many parts of the skeleton are soft and flexible, like the gristles and cartilages, which join the ribs to the breastbone, but in the old man they are replaced by bone. ”

“ THE STRUCTURE OF THE BONES—When a bone is sawed lengthwise, it is found to be a compact shell filled with a spongy substance This filling increases in quantity, and becomes more porous at the ends of the bone, thus giving greater size to form a strong joint, while the solid portion increases near the middle, where strength alone is needed. ”

“ And when both the tables of the bone are driven in upon the membrane, I mean the upper and lower, the wound, if treated in the same way, will very soon get well, and the depressed bones will quickly rise up. ”

“ When, in the human subject, a process of bone passes up from the arch of the atlas, to meet the superior articular surface and convert the groove for the nerve and vertebral artery into a foramen, the process in question is a true oblique process. ”

“ The sphenoid bone is in contact with organs of sensitive delicacy, refinement, and inspiration, the occipital with organs of vital force, the temporal with organs of appetite, excitement, and force, the frontal with organs of intellect and refined benevolence, the parietal with the organs of virtue, amiability, self control, and general strength of character, which make a superior person. ”

“ Thus bones are not dry, lifeless substances, but are the very type of activity and change. In life they are richly supplied with blood from the nutrient artery and from the periosteum, by an endless network of nourishing canals throughout their whole structure. Bone has, therefore, like all other living structures, a self-formative power, and draws from the blood the materials for its own nutrition. ”

“ But, since the bones are thicker at the joints than between them, as a mass grows up the flesh ceases to have that superfluity which it had, between the skin and the bones; whence the skin clings more closely to the bone and the limbs grow more slender. ”

“ If we take a transverse section of the bones of the cranium, we find that they are formed of two very thin layers of bone united by a porous, osseous substance; the external layer is in direct contact with the muscles of the scalp, and the internal layer with the brain. ”

“ For a piece of bone which is quickly dried and converted, as it were, into a shell, is most readily separated from the rest of the bone which retains its blood and vitality; for, the part having become exsanguous and dry, more readily drops off from that which retains its blood and is alive. ”

“ Physiologists and others have dissected man's body, and they have reduced everything to a mass of flesh and bone. They can discuss this bone or that bone, they can discuss various organs, but these are all material things. ”

“ Bone for bone, the two skeletons are like one another, though man is a biped and the horse a quadruped. The backbone in man is mainly vertical; the backbone in the horse is horizontal except in the neck and the tail. Man's skull is mainly in a line with the backbone ”

“ Those, therefore, who maintain that conclusion [Pg 194] cannot be drawn from a part to the whole labour under error, failing to comprehend the harmony of nature.
II.—Physiognomy and the Features
The Forehead. The form, height, arching, proportion, obliquity, and position of the skull, or bone of the forehead, show the propensity of thought, power of thought, and sensibility of man. The position, colour, wrinkles, tension of the skin of the forehead, show the passions and present state of the mind. The bones indicate the power, the skin the application of power. ”

“ Before we speak of the form of a bone, let us say a word about, the mechanical properties of the material of which it is built615, in {674} relation to the strength it has to manifest or the forces it has to resist: understanding always that we mean thereby the properties of fresh or living bone, with all its organic as well as inorganic constituents, for dead, dry bone is a very different thing. ”

“ We teach the children to say "about two hundred," because there is not always the same number of bones in the body. In some parts two or three bones unite and form one bone. For example: the breastbone of a child is made up of eight pieces ”

“ For the most part, the bones separate most quickly in those cases in which suppuration takes place most quickly, and when new flesh is most quickly formed, and is particularly sound, for the flesh which grows up below in the wound generally elevates the pieces of bone. ”

“ You see the larger part at the end is full of little holes, like a sponge. This makes it light and strong. There is a hollow place in long bones filled with marrow. It also fills the spongy parts. Marrow is made of fat and cells.
You must not think that live bones look like one which has been lying out-of-doors a long time. Live bones are full of blood and have a pinkish color. They also have an outside skin, which can be peeled off, as you see in this picture.
A bone with the outside skin partly peeled off.
Amy: What are the bones made of?
[Pg 29]
End of a bone sawed open. ”

“ The joint contains a fluid to oil it, so that the ends of the bones move upon each other very easily. If the joints were dry, every movement of the body would be very difficult and painful.
16. The bones are held together at the joints by means of strong bands called ligaments.
17. How the Bones are Made.—The bones [Pg 98] are not so solid as they seem to be. The outside of most bones is much harder and firmer than the inside. Long bones, like those of the arms and the legs, are hollow. The hollow space is filled with marrow, in which are the blood-vessels which nourish the bone. ”

“ In the usual order of nature, the development of flesh and enlargement of bone proceed together; but here the object is to outstrip the growth of the bones by the quicker development of their fleshy covering. ”

“ The principall bone in the Nape of the Neck, without the shoulder places, taking heed it come not neer the channell bone, for then it will make the throat swell, else not, the elbowes on both sides, the hip bones, the share, the knees, the hammes, and the ankles; if the Patient have no Ache, annoynt not these places, but only the sores till they be whole; if there be any knobs lying in the flesh, as many have, annoynt them often, and lay lint upon them, and brown paper upon the lint, and keep the Patient close out of the aire, and this used will make him whole in ten dayes by the grace of God. ”