Chapter 19

THE STIFFENING RODS OF THE BODY-MACHINE

What Bones Are. The bones are not the solid foundation and framework upon which the body is built, as they are usually described. They are simply a framework of rods and plates which "petrified," or turned into spongy limestone after the body was built, to make it firmer and stiffen it for movement. All the animals below the fishes, such as worms, sea-anemones, oysters, clams, and insects, get along very well without any bones at all; and when we are born, our bones, which haven't fully "set" yet, are still gristly and soft. The cores of the limbs, as they begin to stiffen, first turn into gristle, or cartilage, and later into bone; indeed, many of our bones remain gristle in parts until we are fifteen or sixteen years of age. This is why children's bones, being softer and more flexible than those of grown-up people, are not so liable to break or snap across when they fall or tumble about; and why, too, they are more easily warped or bent out of shape through lack of proper muscular exercise and proper food.

Bones are strips of soft body-stuff soaked with lime and hardened, like bricklayer's mortar, or concrete.[24] When you know the shape of the body, you know the bones; for they simply form a shell over the head and run like cores, or piths, down the centre of the back, and down each joint of the limbs.

In turning into spongy limestone, or animal concrete, they have become one of the deadest tissues in the body. They are tools of the muscles, the levers by which the muscles move the limbs and body about; they never do anything of their own accord. On account of their lifelessness and lack of vitality, they are rather easily attacked by disease, or broken by a blow or fall. There are such a large number of bones (two hundred and six, all told), and they resist decay and last so much longer after death than any other parts of the body, that they fill our museums and text-books of anatomy, form most of our fossils, and have thus given us rather an exaggerated idea of their importance during life.

The Frame-Work of the Body. Just look at any part of the body and imagine that it has a bony core of about the same general shape as itself, and you can reason out all the bones of the skeleton. To begin at the top, the _skull_ is a box of strong, plate-like bones, which have hardened to protect the brain as it grew; and the shape of its upper, or brain, part is exactly that of the head, as you can easily feel by laying your hands upon it. Then come bony shells, or sockets, for the eyes and nose; and, below these, two heavy half-circles of bone, like the jaws of a steel trap, to carry the teeth.

The thickness of the lower jaw and the size and squareness of the angle where it bends upward to be hinged to the skull, below the ear, are what give the appearance of squareness and determination to the faces of strong, vigorous men or women. If we want to imply that a person has a feeble will, or weak character, we say he has a "weak jaw."

The skull rests upon the top of the backbone, or _spinal column_, which, instead of being one long solid bone, is made up of a number of pieces, or sections, known as _vertebræ_. Each one of these vertebræ has a ring, or arch, upon its back. These, running one after the other, form a jointed, bony tube to protect the _spinal cord_, or main nerve-cable of the body, which runs through it.

Although the backbone can bend forward or backward, or twist from side to side a little, by the little pieces of bone of which it is built up gliding and turning upon one another, it is really very stiff and rigid, so as to protect the spinal cord and prevent its being stretched or pinched. Most of the movements which we call bending the spine are really movements of other joints which connect the body or head with it. When we bend our necks, for instance, we hardly bend the backbone at all, as most of the movement is made in the joint at the top of it, between it and the skull. Similarly, when we bend our backs, we really bend our backbones very little; for most of the movement comes at the hip joints, between the thighs and the hip bones.

Each of the limbs has a single, long, rounded bone in the upper part, known in the arm as the _humerus_, and two bones in the lower part. These last are known as the _radius_ and _ulna_ (the "funny bone") in the forearm, and the _tibia_ and _fibula_ in the leg. The shoulder-joint is made by the rounded head of the humerus fitting into the shallow cup of the _scapula_, or shoulder-blade. It is shallower than the hip joint to allow it freer movement; but this makes it weaker and much more easily dislocated, or put out of joint,--the most so, in fact, of any joint in the body.

The hip joints are deep, strong, cup-shaped sockets upon each side of the hip bones, or _pelvis_, into which fit the heads of the _femurs_ or thigh bones. When the hip joint does become dislocated, it is very hard to put back again, on account of its depth and the heavy muscles surrounding it. It is quite subject to the attack of tuberculosis, or "hip-joint disease."

The _joints_, or points at which the bones join one another, look rather complicated, but they are really as simple as the bones themselves. Each joint has practically made itself by the two bones' rubbing against each other, until finally their ends became moulded to each other, and formed the ball-and-socket, or the hinge, according to whichever the movements of the "bend" required. The ends, or heads, of the bones which form a joint are covered with a smooth, shining coating of _cartilage_, or gristle, so that they glide easily over each other.

Around each joint has grown up a strong sheath of tough, fibrous tissue to hold the bones together; and, inside this, between the heads of the bones, is a very delicate little bag, or pouch, containing a few drops of smooth, slippery fluid (_synovial fluid_) to lubricate the movements of the joint. This is sometimes called the "joint oil," though it is not really oil.

Bones are covered with a tough skin, or membrane (_periosteum_). They are hardest and most solid on their surfaces, and hollow, or spongy, inside. The long bones of the limbs are hollow, and the cavity is filled with a delicate fat called _marrow_--just as an elderberry stem or willow-twig is filled with pith. This tubular shape makes them as strong as if they were solid, and much lighter.[25]

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] You can easily prove that a bone is made up of living tissue soaked and stiffened with lime, by putting it into a jar filled with weak acid. This will gradually dissolve and melt out the lime salts, and then you will find that the bone has lost three-fourths of its weight and that what remains of it is so soft and flexible that it can be bent, or even tied into a knot.

[25] The hollow spaces in the bones of birds, however, are filled with air, which makes them lighter for flying.