THE OSSEOUS SYSTEM. 323 



be regarded as bone-corpuscles (lacunae) filled with calcareous 

 particles, as which they have lately been considered by H. 

 Meyer (1. c, p. 325, 32G). By the addition of spirit of tur- 

 pentine, which, however, penetrates with difficulty, this error 

 is dissipated, and it is found, that as in the case of the lacunas 

 of dried bone, the opaque aspect is due only to the air 

 contained in them, and that the bodies in question are nothing 

 more than thick-walled cartilage-cells, retaining their contents 

 (fat, nuclei), presenting occasionally indications of canal iculi, 

 and perhaps also partly calcified ; in other words, that they 

 arc undeveloped lacunce. The layer in which these cells are 

 lodged, and which, towards the cartilage, is bounded by a 

 straight line, occasionally dark from calcareous particles, and 

 towards the true bone by a sinuous contour, in which the 

 limits, as it were, of the individual lacunaj are distinguishable, 

 is not found either exclusively in bones not yet fully formed, 

 as Gerlach believes, nor only at a more advanced age (from 

 30 upwards, and particularly in old men), as H. Meyer states, 

 but, at all events as far as my observation extends, at all ages, 

 from the complete development of the bone upwards, in- 

 variably in every articulation, except that of the lower jaw 

 and those on the os hyoides} 



The articular cartilage on the head of the femur, in a man 

 25 years old, measured 1 — 1±'" in thickness; on the condyles 

 in the middle, \%"' } on the margin, | — V" ; in the fovea 

 patella, U — ]§"'; in the middle of the condyles of the tibia, 

 1^"; at the borders, \ — %"; in the middle of the patella, 

 1± — If"; in the glenoid cavity of the tibia, \ — ■{"; on the 

 body of the astragalus, on the upper side, §'", on the under, ~", 

 on its head, f; at the base of the first metatarsal bone, 

 3 — l!" , on its head £'; on the inner cuneiform bone, in front, 

 5 — g'", behind, | — §'". In the foetus, about the middle period 

 of uterine life, the vessels of the synovial membrane, according 

 to Toynbee (' Phil. Transact./ 1841), extend much further upon 

 the articular cartilage ; of which fact, however, I have been 

 unable to satisf} 7 myself in the humerus of a five or six month 

 foetus, or in new-born infants. In pathological states endo- 



1 [This peculiarity of the hone beneath the articular cartilages was first pointed out 

 by Dr. Sharpey (Quain and Sharpey, 5th ed., p. clviii) ; and is particularly described 

 by Tomes and De Morgan, 1. c, pp. 10, 11. — Eds.] 



