Abstracts of the Bone Research Society Annual Meeting 2024
Year: 2024
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: An 1865 case of Phossy jaw Revisited with X-ray MicroTomography and Scanning Electron Microscopy in 2024: growth of a new mandible after its removal. David Mills*, Graham R. Davis*, Thomas Kelly†, Martyn Cooke‡, Alan Boyde* * Dental Physical Sciences, QMUL † School of Geography, QMUL ‡ Barts Pathology Museum, QMUL Smith, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports, vol. i (1865), p. 101, reported the case of a 35-year-old male phosphorus-match-factory worker with necrosis of the mandible. The jaw was removed under chloroform the by ‘dividing it at the symphysis and dragging the two halves out separately. The dead bone came away completely denuded of soft parts and without the slightest remnant of periosteum’. ‘The patient made a good recovery’ and was discharged after six weeks, when he ‘indulged rather freely in stimulants’ and died. At post-mortem, Smith reported the discovery of a newly formed jaw that lay lower in the neck than the original bone: he provided a beautiful illustration of the presumed relationships of the old and new tissues. He stated that the new bone bore much more resemblance in external outline to its predecessor before the soft parts were removed and it had dried out. The two specimens (A.141 and A.142) were preserved in the Barts’s Pathology Museum and we obtained permission to scan them with XMT - for which we used the Nikon system in the Geography Dept., QMUL, 150kV, no filters, 80µm voxel resolution: and by SEM – using a Zeiss EVO10, 20kV, backscattered electrons (BSE), uncoated, 50Pa chamber pressure. The half-mandibles removed at operation felt remarkably dense. A substantial flange of ‘new bone’ external to the left angle of the old jaw was not commented by Smith. XMT showed generally that all the old dead bone was more highly mineralised than healthy modern bone. New bone in the new mandible occurred in three density classes, the third - a substantial, continuous phase - apparently having no mineral content. This corresponds to Smith’s ‘part of the jaw that is wholly deficient in bony structure’. BSE-SEM showed that parts of the bone surface were clean and interpretable: we have no information regarding any cleaning treatment that may have been undertaken in making the museum specimens: they might have been boiled, but there are no signs of scraping or scratching from dissection: they seem to be too clean to have been buried. There are substantial regions of calcified cartilage as well as woven bone callus which are probably the parts that Smith described as like pumice, as well as highly vascular compact bone with blood vessel canals penetrating from the surface. This study has shown that valuable information can be retrieved from museum specimens with minimal intervention using modern imaging techniques. 3D render of the regrown jaw from XMT data.
Source: JBMR Plus
Authors: MILLS, D, Davis, GR, Kelly, T, Cooke, M, Boyde, A, Bone Research Society Annual Meeting 2024
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,032
Funder: UK Research and Innovation
OpenAlex ID: W4401648604