Experiments and observations on shell and bone / [Charles Hatchett].

  • Charles Hatchett
Date:
[1799]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments and observations on shell and bone / [Charles Hatchett]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    form modifications of bone; or according to their vicinity with such membranes or cartilages as are liable to such a change. If horns are examined, few I believe will be found to contain phosphate of lime in such a proportion as to be considered an essential ingredient. I would not be understood to speak here of such as stag or buck horn, for that has every chemical character of bone, with some excess of cartilage; but I allude to those in which the substance of the horn is distinctly separate from the bone, and which, like a sheath, covers a bony protuberance which issues from the os frontis of cer¬ tain animals.* Horns of this nature, such as those of the ox, the ram, and the chamois, also tortoise shell, afford, after distillation and in¬ cineration, so very small a residuum, of which only a small part is phosphate: rbf lime, that this latter can scarcely be regarded as a necessary ingredient. By some experiments made on 500 grains of the horn of the ox, I obtained, after a long continued heat, only 1,50 gr. of residuum; and, of this, less than half proved to be phosphate of lime. 78 grains of the horn of the chamois afforded only 0,50 of residuum; and 500 grains of tortoise shell yielded not more than 0,25 of a grain, of which, less than half was phosphate of lime. Now it must be evident, that so very small a quantity cannot influence the nature of the substances which afforded it; and the same may be said of synovia, 480 grains of which did not yield more than one grain of phosphate of lime. This substance is undoubtedly various in its proportions, in all these and other animal substances, arising probably from * N.iture stems here to have made an analysis or separation of horn from bone.
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