556 COLORATION OF BONES FROM MADDER. 
To-day I present to the Academy a fact much more curious, 
and, as 1 believe, quite new. Not merely are the bones of 
the animal itself nourished with madder, but those of the 
foetus also are reddened, and of much deeper colour, by the 
single circumstance that the mother has been submitted to 
a diet mixed with madder during the last forty-five days of 
gestation. 
And not only have all the bones become red, but the teeth 
also, and what is remarkable, in a manner much more 
complete and uniform than when the foetus, being born, is 
itself submitted, so soon as it can eat, to the madder regime. 
So much greater permeability does the tissue of the embryo 
afford to the circulation of the blood of the mother. But it 
is only the bones and the teeth which become thus affected. 
Neither the periosteum, nor the cartilages, nor the tendons, 
nor the muscles, nor the stomach, nor the intestines—nothing, 
in a word, which is not bone—is thus coloured. 
I can show to the Academy three pieces, which are three 
parts of the same skeleton. 
The first is the right tibia. All the bone is red, but neither 
the periosteum nor the cartilage is at all so. 
The second piece is the left tibia. A shred of periosteum 
has been detached at one point, and it is seen to preserve 
its ordinary white colour. 
The third piece is the rest of the skeleton. One may 
remark above all the teeth, which are perfectly coloured. 
The sow which gave me this foetus produced five at the 
birth. Two were dead, and both were found equally coloured. 
Three others live, and we may judge by the colour of the 
teeth, that of the rest of the skeleton. 
The mother does not communicate directly or immediately 
with the interior of the foetus except through the blood. 
Now, the connexion of the blood of the mother with that of 
the foetus, in whatever mode that may be, which 1 shall 
examine in another note, is a fact full of consequences. 
How does the foetus respire? How is it nourished? 
Evidently through the blood of the mother. All physiolo¬ 
gists have also thought and said so. But does the blood of 
the mother communicate with that of the foetus? Here is 
the whole question, and by the specimens which I bring 
before the Academy, one may see that it is solved. 
The blood of the mother communicates so fully with that 
of the foetus, that the colouring principle of madder, the same 
principle which colours the bones of the mother, colours also 
the bones of the foetus .—Compies Bendus. 
