Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15815

    Periosteum and how the membrane and bone are connected

    Date
    20 November 1720
    Creator
    John Sturt (1658 - 1730, British) , Engraver
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p9
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 205mm
    width (page): 270mm
    Subject
    Description
    Seven engraved images. Original drawings can be found in Letter Book 15 (LBO/15/231). The printed images are cut out of plate 2 from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 31, no. 366 (1721). Leeuwenhoek had the images drawn for him. The copper plate for the Philosophical Transactions was engraved by John Sturt (signature on plate).

    Letter by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society, in which he is trying to determine how the periosteum was joined to the vessels that compose the bones. The periosteum is the membrane enveloping the bones where no cartilage is present.

    Fig. 1: Periosteum, or bone membrane of a cow, sheep or calf.
    Fig. 2: the same bit of bone and membrane, but then cut in the length, showing all the vessels in the tissue as dots.
    Fig. 3: a small bit of bone (RSTV) with membrane (SWXT), which is not thicker than the hair on a man's chin.
    Fig. 4: a piece of bone of the rib of a cow with flesh, cut sectionally. YZAB shows the membrane, ZCDA the flesh fibres.
    Fig. 5: a bit of the rib bone of a cow, where the bone membrane and the bone are still partly connected between K and C.
    Figs 6 & 7: circumferences of the bone from which the membrane has been taken off.
    Object history
    Figures printed in A. Leeuwenhoek, 'Observations upon the Bones and the Periosteum', Phil. Trans. vol. 31, no. 366 (1721), pp. 91-97.
    Related fellows
    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632 - 1723, Dutch) , Naturalist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Netherlands
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