Book Description

Incredible Bones is based on the perspective of two experienced scientists. Their shared goal is to better understand the human skeleton and to compile an accurate photographic and historical document of a small portion of the vast osteological collection at the Narrenturm Museum. This comparative atlas records and shares some of the most incredible skeletal malformations and the wide range of variability and severity that can afflict the human skeleton, before and after the advent of antibiotics. It captures examples of disease, malformations, and trauma with little or no surgical or medical intervention and reveals their natural progression, often, without treatment. This atlas will assist practitioners in making more accurate interpretations and in making better differential diagnosis of human skeletal remains, whether ancient, modern, or contemporary. It will also serve as a resource for scientists, oftentimes paleopathologists, in the process of excavating, analyzing, interpreting, and accurately reconstructing skeletal remains in historical contexts. Incredible Bones presents large, full color photographs augmented with diagnoses based on historical records and sometimes patient histories. Each description and interpretation (diagnosis as it were) in this book are based on medical diagnosis prior to or at the time they were received at the Narrenturm. Each photograph in Incredible Bones is intended to “show” the reader a level of detail and clarity usually only gleaned through physical examination. The authors use high quality and sometimes larger than life photographs so that readers can interpret what they are seeing and perhaps even identify subtle details not provided by the authors. Incredible Bones, therefore, serves as a comparative and exploratory photographic atlas of skeletal conditions not usually seen in daily practice or even in most skeletal assemblages, collections, or museums. This book provides readers with a behind-the-scenes perspective of some of the most extreme and thought-provoking examples in the Narrenturm pathological-anatomical collection. The format of Incredible Bones utilizes a regional approach to the human skeleton with each chapter beginning with the cranium and ending with the feet, a “head to toe” approach. Using a regional approach to the skeleton based on broad categories of conditions that include, for example, tumors and neoplasia, enables the reader to search for a skeletal condition without first having to know the name of the disease, anomaly, or other condition they are seeking to identify.