title: The nature of bones and joints: a new perspective.
abstract: In human ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, bones arrive late on the scene--long after neurogenesis, musculogenesis, organogenesis and so on are over--as islands of ossification in an ocean of collagen. This study confirms this developmental sequence by demonstrating, in cadavers, the rather independent nature of bone, to which nothing--muscle, tendon, ligament or articular cartilage--is attached. Bone is like the air in a tubeless tyre; it gives rigidity and shape to the tyre, and in return takes the shape of the tyre. The tibia, for example, is the bony tissue that is contained in tyre-like casing made of peritibial soft tissues whose inner limit is the periosteum, which continues proximally and distally as capsules of knee/ankle joint, and to which only are the articular cartilages of the knee and ankle attached, being clearly free from the bones. This study also exposes the truer nature of a joint wherein the articular cartilage assumes anatomic and physiologic significance hitherto unthought of.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Seth G. S. Medical College, Parel, Bombay, Maharashtra.
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Kothari
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Mehta
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Natrajan
mesh_terms: D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007596:Joints / Q000033:anatomy & histology*