122 LABORATORY MANUAL OF ANTHROPOMETRY 



VI. THE BONES OF THE LEG AND FOOT 

 Femur* 



I. MEASUREMENTS 



A. Length 



Under this head four possible measurements may be taken, as follows :- 



1. Absolute length; taken with the osteometric board. OB 



2. Physiological length; this is the length used by Turner, and described 

 by him as "taken in the oblique position". The two condyles are set 

 upon a plane surface, and the length is then measured along a line per- 

 pendicular to this plane. This is taken with the osteometric board by 

 placing the two condyles in contact with the fixed end. The shaft then 

 lies obliquely in the trough of the board, and the moveable piece is shut 

 down upon the head, thus measuring the greatest length obtainable 

 with the bone in this position. This corresponds to the physiological, or 

 efficient, length in the living limb. OB 



3. Trochanteric length; from the most prominent point of the greater 

 trochanter to the most distal point of the lateral condyle. This is an 

 especially convenient measure, since it can be taken upon an articulated 

 skeleton, or upon a fragmentary femur that has lost the head. 



It can also be approximately detei mined upon the living subject. RC 

 Recent English work on this bone is that of Parsons; Characters of 

 the English Thigh-bone (Journ. Anat. [English], Vol. 48, 1913-14; and 

 Vol. 49, 1914-15). The author obtained his material from a crypt of the 

 13th and 14th Centuries, where the bones of some 33,000 persons had 

 been interred, and thus had recourse to an enormous collection of bones 

 of mediaeval Englishmen. Holtby in the same Journal (Vol. 52, 1918), 

 gives a few additional data. 



4. Diaphysial length (shaft-length); this uses as the two terminal 

 points the upper end of the anterior intertrochanteric line, marked by a 

 slight tubercle, and the middle of the anterior intercondyloid line, that is, 

 its most proximal point. This may be measured by any suitable in- 

 strument; Lehmann-Nitsche uses a steel tape. RC or TM. 



* A thorough analysis of the femur anthropometrically, both in the recent species, 

 and in //. prvmigenius, is found in Klaatsch's paper in Merkel and Bonnet's Anat. 

 Ergebnisse, Bd. X. 1900. The special part treating of the femur is found on pp. 

 609-665. There is also an excellent bibliography of the subject to date. The full 

 title is, Die wichtigsten Variationen am Skelet der freien unteren Extremitaten 

 des Menschen, und ihre Bedeutung fur das Abstammingsproblem. 



Much of the pioneer work upon the femur, and the other long bones, was done 

 by Lehmann-Nitsche in his investigation of the prehistoric " Reihengraber" skeletons 

 Cf. for this, his " TJntersuchungerj fiber die langen Knochen der siidbayerischen Rei- 

 hengraberbevolkerung", in Beitrage zur Anthropol. u. Urgeschichte Bayerns. Bd. IX. 

 1895. 



