Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outlines of human pathology / by Herbert Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![The substance of the Uver was natural. The articulations were in a healthy state. The periosteum covering the bones generally appeared natural; but over the trochanters it was entirely detached. The bones of the cranium and pelvis could be cut with a knife; while the ribs and ver- tebrae were but slightly affected, and scarcely less firm than usual. The bones of the lower extremities were far more extensively dipeased than those of the upper. The thigh bones consisted of a mere shell of bone, filled with a fatty substance: the fractured extremities of the femur and hu- merus had a slight ligamentous connexion. \d. 15 *.] In Mr. Wilson's description of a case of mollities ossium, in a woman who died at forty-eight years of age, the only bones which were not entirely softened were the sacrum and the bones of the feet. The bones consisted of a thin flexible and brittle shell; and in the place of cancelli, a substance resembling coagulated blood was found, with cells contain- ing oil. In the fourth volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transac- tions, Dr. Bostock describes an analysis, by himself, of two of the dorsal vertebrae of an adult female, whose bones were discovered, after death, to be unusually soft and flex- ible, the result, as it was supposed, of mollities ossium. The composition of the bones was as follows: — Cartilage , 57.25 Jelly and oil 22.5 Phosphate of lime 13.6 Sulphate of lime 4.7 Carbonate of lime 1.13 Phosphate of magnesia 82 100.00](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21066735_0056.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
