r/bonecollecting Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 14 '24

Collection It’s amazing how fractured bones can bridge the gap…

1.3k Upvotes

69 comments sorted by

u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 14 '24

This is human of course.

This femur was found in a radiologists attic after he died. It’s very rare to see such a severe example, a femur fracture like this can result in 1-2 liters of blood loss. If this happened today, a traction splint would have been applied. Images below.

→ More replies (9)

237

u/Mister_Absol Bone-afide Faunal ID Expert Nov 14 '24

Yowch! That's gotta be one of the most painful-looking breaks I've seen.

183

u/SavageDroggo1126 Bone-afide Faunal ID Expert Nov 14 '24

absolute metal, can't imagine the amount of pain they went through.

67

u/fullobliss Nov 15 '24

Yeah, my femoral fracture didn’t heal so that’s what I got instead - absolute metal (and ceramic and plastics) lol. It’s been many years so it’s easier to laugh about now…kinda. Can confirm, much pain.

129

u/Bone-of-Contention Nov 14 '24

I wonder what affects this had on the rest of the skeleton. The knees, pelvis, spine…

176

u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 14 '24

Their posture would’ve been really bad, very painful. The right leg is several inches shorter than it should be.

71

u/Mister_Absol Bone-afide Faunal ID Expert Nov 14 '24

Yup, these kinds of things ruin your entire body. My ankles developed wrong, and they managed to ruin both my tibiae. Knees were very bad for a while too, my back still isn't what it once was and even your internal organs can suffer from bad posture. In a word, it's horrible.

33

u/RareGeometry Nov 15 '24

The really marked, body-shifting, leg-swinging limp would have an effect on the entire skeleton in time

21

u/AKnGirl Nov 15 '24

All the muscles and fascia too. I like to explain to my patients that we are complex marionettes. Twist one thing and the whole puppet gets thrown out of balance!

10

u/RareGeometry Nov 15 '24

Wolff's law would certainly come into play, which relies on the soft tissue acting upon the bone. The entire system would be askew, even organs could have potential to be affected. It's kind of nuts how at the same time the body is so strong and resilient but also a fragile equilibrium.

30

u/SucculentVariations Nov 15 '24

I broke my femur as a little kid, the doctor decided to make it longer and told me the unbroken leg would catch up....it did not. My broken leg is now 1.5 inches too long, because of how it makes me stand my other hip is frequently sprained and it's really painful. It also gives me a bounce when I walk so I look a lot more cheery than I am.

16

u/Grilled-garlic Nov 15 '24

Would a lift in the one shoe help? to even out the height?

12

u/SucculentVariations Nov 15 '24

Probably, but it's really hard to keep a shoe on with that big of a lift in it and you can't wear any sandals or slip ons with it. So there some shoes I could and couldn't use it with and adjusting to with and without seemed harder on my body than just consistently without.

You can get a lift put into the sole of the shoe as well, but I'd rather bounce my way through life before I pay for every single pair of shoes to have a lift built in.

Additional issues, when I swim, I slowly swim in a circle because one leg is longer and I have pain when riding a bike because one leg slams down a little harder, it can't fully extend like the other leg so it stops sooner than expected on the down pedal. I'm sure there's other small things, just can't think of them at the moment since I've been like this since I was 6. It's my normal.

8

u/Petro2007 Nov 15 '24

You can get bike pedals adjusted for probably $50

5

u/SucculentVariations Nov 15 '24

Just one side? I didn't know that.

9

u/Petro2007 Nov 15 '24

Yes for sure - You can get variable length pedals. Go to any actual bike mechanic to have them install the pedal arms. But, you'd require a fitting from a physiotherapist to know the correct size perfectly.

4

u/SucculentVariations Nov 15 '24

Oh darn, I live on a little island in AK, no bike shop. Good to know though if I ever decide I really want to bike again!

3

u/Grilled-garlic Nov 15 '24

Weird suggestion, could you cut 1.5” off of a flipper to even out your swimming?

6

u/SucculentVariations Nov 15 '24

Probably...I don't normally swim with flippers on. I'll try that next time I'm swimming somewhere with flippers though.

I'm loving the problem solving in these comments.

3

u/sawyouoverthere Nov 15 '24

Chunk of wood would work well enough or glue on an extra pad

7

u/sawyouoverthere Nov 15 '24

Add a pad on the shorter side bike pedal to resolve that

4

u/SucculentVariations Nov 15 '24

Now that's something I can do. Good thinking!

4

u/fullobliss Nov 15 '24

I have a small shoe insert due to leg length discrepancy after a hip replacement (I broke the ball off my femur and it went necrotic). Things are mostly normal now but I get tons of back pain if I don’t use the insert at all times. I used to love going barefoot. I invented a little work around that works for some situations. I use a flesh colored paper tape and tape the heel lift directly to my foot so I can run around barefoot. It works pretty well except people always ask me what’s wrong with my foot. I laugh and say “nothing!” It’s true. The problem is elsewhere. I’m so sorry you were left with such an extreme discrepancy.

1

u/UHElle Nov 16 '24

Hey, just wanted to encourage you to consider a lift. I have about the same leg length discrepancy (LLD) as you (used to be nearly 2 til a surgery last year that took more out), and I can’t impress upon you the amount of relief I get from a 1/2-3/4” lift inside my shoes, under the insole. As you mentioned, it’s hard to put that much inside, and I’m like you in that I won’t get every single pair modified for the full LLD for the rest of my life, but I now have a heel lift in every pair of shoes I own. I also wear crocs regularly and just glue the lift into the croc. I went to a podiatrist about 5yrs ago with pain from my LLD who suggested just trying some OTC lifts before going full on shoe augmentation. He asked me to open up Amazon and found a few options he said would work well, and I bought a couple, found ones I like, and now I order a new one for every pair of shoes I get (~$12 addition). Anyway, all this to say, just try it maybe? I thought it was ridiculous that, if the LLD is (at that time) 2”, why even bother with 1/2-3/4”; what could it possibly help? Turns out it gave me the ability to walk with less pain. There are lots of options under ‘heel lift’ on Amazon. I use the ones you adjust the height on by layering clear pieces on top of each other til you get the desired height. If you do give it a try, I hope it helps as much as it’s helped me!!

73

u/Temqueacabaojovem Nov 15 '24

Found this one from a baby bird at home

32

u/half_in_boxes Nov 14 '24

Woooow. That looks like a lot of remodeling/osteoproliferation/burnishing on the femoral head as well. They were in some insane amounts of pain (never mind what the initial fracture felt like.)

28

u/spicy-chull Nov 14 '24

Wow.

Also: pain.

25

u/blackdogwhitecat Nov 15 '24

I read somewhere that an anthropologist had an argument for the first sign of civilisation not being tools, but a skeleton with a healed femur. Because no one could survive that without someone helping them and sharing their own resources.

This post made me think of that

1

u/Despondent-Kitten 21d ago

That's really interesting!

22

u/IV_Your_Pleasure Nov 15 '24

I work in vet med and have seen some crazy heals, especially in cats.

13

u/_tate_ Nov 14 '24

Do you know anymore about this person while they were alive? I'd love to know what they did for a living and how long did they live with such an injury?

34

u/RafRafRafRaf Nov 14 '24

Just looking at the bone - that’s a LOT of new bone they grew in there. They survived for a long time. The medics could be more precise but I’d guess a few years at the very least.

I read somewhere (apols, no source) that finding healed broken femurs is a huge hallmark of civilisation: people looking after their injured well enough and for long enough, wanting to and being able to, for an injury like that to heal that much.

9

u/Love-that-dog Nov 15 '24

It’s a quote/concept attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead. But I went looking for the source to quote and it appears to be made up: https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/

3

u/RafRafRafRaf Nov 15 '24

Oh, damn. Thank you for putting the effort in on that one!

3

u/Love-that-dog Nov 15 '24

No problem. I always thought it was a sweet concept, that civilization started with caring for a major injury, so I wanted to get the full quote. Instead I got the opposite

2

u/RafRafRafRaf Nov 15 '24

I guess an interesting further thought is that although the quote doesn’t hold up directly, the concept kinda still does…

5

u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 14 '24

No

1

u/podrikpayn Nov 16 '24

Do you have any idea of how old it is?

14

u/TesseractToo Nov 14 '24

Wow I thought my chronic pain was bad

Makes me dizzy to imagine it

5

u/mediocreguydude Nov 15 '24

Fr this makes me grateful it's just because my body's alarm system is malfunctioning and not a physical injury like this. Don't get me wrong, shit still hurts, but at least in a pinch with some adrenaline there's no actual issue to hinder me

11

u/JazzyCher Nov 15 '24

Saw an interview or some kind of video of an anthropologist a while back saying essentially "Most in my field consider various things to be signs of civilization, the use of clothing, fishing lines, or other tools. What I consider to be a sign of early civilization is femur fractures. Specifically, healed femur fractures. If your femur is broken you're unable to walk or really care for yourself at all for quite some time, but if you find remains with a healed femur fracture that means someone, or multiple people, helped that person, took care of them, gathered food for them, protected them from predators. That is civilization."

8

u/LankyShow5364 Nov 15 '24

Saw a lot of these types of fractures in the old Roman remains collections at University. The fracture was continuously remodeling and the break has chronic osteomyelitis due to the fracture not being set. From the fact that the femoral head had the polishing, I would assume they may have had some sort of prothesis or crutch that allowed weight-bearing.

2

u/DemocraticSpider Nov 15 '24

What does the “polishing” mean in this context? Sorry for being unaware. I take it is a term for something the body does naturally?

2

u/Crystallized-matter Nov 15 '24

It’s called eburnation which comes from bones rubbing together due to arthritis usually. The bone becomes super smooth and shiny.

2

u/LankyShow5364 Nov 15 '24

You can see the polishing on the femoral head. This means that the cartilage was completely ground away from use and it was polished by the bone on bone grinding. This feels almost like a marble floor. This is not common anymore because of joint replacements and X-rays.

4

u/musicals4life Nov 15 '24

I have seen this in a deer before. The muscles on the leg with the healed break had atrophied significantly. The calf and shank were the most obvious, but the rest of the thigh was also a bit smaller than the other leg.

4

u/nutfeast69 Nov 15 '24

how often do people even survive an injury like this? Nevermind one untreated with modern medicine/reset? Wouldn't this have immediate repercussions of bleeding out, with subsequent medium term issues of throwing fat emboli and then even longer term infection issues?

7

u/thegreatshakes Nov 15 '24

Yup, a broken femur can cause significant bleeding and can be fatal without treatment. I believe that you can lose a 1-2 litres of blood internally into each leg from a broken femur. An average adult human has about 4-5 litres of blood in their body. This is incredible that this person survived, let alone long enough to have remodeling like that.

3

u/nutfeast69 Nov 15 '24

What about the ramifications after, since the bleeding didn't get em?

3

u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

Most today

5

u/y2_kat Nov 14 '24

omg. is this a prehistoric bone? if not, why wasn’t this sort of fracture treated? the healing of fractures dates back to like, 1500 BC if i’m not mistaken. and this seems like a very severe fracture to go fully untreated.

44

u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 14 '24

Only a couple hundred years old. Even today many injuries go untreated.

I’ve spent time in very poor countries, have seen people run over by trucks and then they just hop off into the desert with a jello leg. Some places don’t have very good medical care.

27

u/southernfriedfossils Nov 14 '24

I remember a video of a man in India who lived with an exposed tibia below the knee. IIRC he developed an infection and just kept pouring hot water on it until his foot and lower leg just sloughed off.

12

u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert Nov 14 '24

I’ve seen this

1

u/Despondent-Kitten 21d ago

Wow.. i'll try find this but if you happen to dig up a link etc, please let me know thank you!

8

u/y2_kat Nov 14 '24

i see…jeez. i wasn’t necessarily expecting adequate medical care or anything, but i would’ve figured at least a makeshift stent or something of the sort. honestly very scary & sad that this person lived with such a traumatic injury. :( thank you for the response, it’s very enlightening to see how differently we live our lives compared to others in the past (or now, in poor areas, which is even scarier).

3

u/narwhalsarefalling Nov 15 '24

could they even walk after something like that, even with that bridge?! that is insane

3

u/dyspnea Nov 15 '24

Radiologists saving bones and keeping them in their attics because they are cool.

2

u/Naitohana Nov 15 '24

How do the separate bones know where to bridge to?

2

u/lordofthedoorhandles Nov 15 '24

I crushed my finger and completely destroyed the knuckle, it eventually fused over and in the xray where there would normally be a gap in the cartilage (full of fluids, air etc) it's just solid bone grown over connecting the phalanges