Osteology

OSTEOLOGY (from Greek .osteon-bone and logos-science), the name given by the Greek historian of the 1st century, Diodorus Siculus, to a collection of bones remaining after a human corpse was burned on a pyre. From the 18th century, this term began to designate, at the proposal of Heister, the branch of anatomy in which the bones are described. When it was no longer sufficient to be satisfied with a mere description, the content of Osteology was significantly expanded and deepened. In general Osteology, the tissues composing the bones (bone tissue, periosteum, bone marrow, and articular and epiphyseal cartilage) are described, osteogenesis is considered (see Bone), the course of skeletal development in the fetal and post-fetal periods is examined, and the appearance and fusion of ossification centers (more or less generally) are outlined. A more detailed description of these processes and the most interesting anomalies in their course are given when individual bones or complexes of them, for example the wrist, tarsus, and skeleton of the fingers (polydactyly, syndactyly), the spine, thorax, skull, etc., are considered. Regarding an already developed bone, Osteology provides information on the chemical composition of bone tissue, explaining its physical properties in conjunction with the peculiarities of bone structure; thus the constructive role of the skeleton, its influence on external body forms, and at the same time the dependence of the details of bone form and structure on the influence exerted upon them by the organs in contact with and connected to the skeleton (vessels, nerves, glands, brain, tendon attachments, muscle work, etc.) and especially the external environment and heredity are revealed. Changes in the physical properties of bone under the influence of disturbed metabolism (for example, rickets), which also affects the general normal course of skeletal development, are noted. Phenomena of metaplasia, regeneration, age and sex peculiarities of the skeleton as a whole and of its individual parts, individual peculiarities of them, the significance of pneumatization, vascularity, and innervation of bones are usually considered in special Osteology, where first of all information on the nomenclature of bones is given, then the bones and the skeleton as a whole are described in detail, and more detailed data on embryology and comparative anatomy are provided for a better understanding of both the norm and the anomalies of the skeletal system, as well as from the field of paleontology with an indication of the significance of reconstructions based on fossil finds, which are of interest in questions of human phylogeny. Familiarity with well-known chapters of anthropology and anthropometry, along with the study of the skeleton on a living human body, which gives much to the practical physician, completes Osteology. Its careful study provides a great deal of valuable material for a dialectical understanding of the structure of the human body, since when considering the peculiarities of the skeleton from the point of view of its ontogeny and phylogeny, its plasticity and variability, which depends on the influence of various factors on this, at first glance, hard and intractable support of the human body, are easily detected. In the very recent time, the study of Osteology has come to be closely linked with that of the active motor apparatus (joints and muscles).