What did William Hunter know about bone?

Abstract

This article examines William Hunter's specimens on bone in the Anatomy Museum at the University of Glasgow. By referring to students' notes taken at Hunter's lectures and to the Manuscript Catalogue of his anatomical specimens, we attempt to answer the question, "What did William Hunter know about bone?" Hunter seems to have been particularly interested in the relationship between vascularisation and ossification and many of the specimens illustrate this. He provided his students with reasoned arguments on a number of issues: that the marrow serves as a fat store and not to produce synovial fluid or to keep bones supple; the periosteum serves as an attachment for tendons and ligaments; the rationale for the presence of epiphyses is not readily defined; that bones form by intramembranous and endochondral ossification and that, in the latter, cartilage is replaced by bone. William Hunter narrowly failed to realise that in long bones new bone is laid down by the periosteum and at the epiphysial plates, and is remodeled. These discoveries were to be made by his brother, John.