SOMETIME 111 thc summer of 1736. a calico printer of the City of Londoii entertained to supper John Belchier, a promising young and inqmnng surgeon, and, all unwittingly, introduced him a t the same time to a method of iinravelling some of Nature's greatest secrets. The method to whch Belchier was thus introduced was that of vital staining, one whch picks out certain elements of the body by distinctive colours whilc they are still livmg. The calico printer was an economical man, and used the maddersoaked bran from his dye-vats to feed pigs. The pigs he uscd t o feed his friends. It was a joint of this madder-fed pork which was placed before the young surgeon, then in his thirtieth year and just elected t o the staff of Guy's Hospital. It was but natural that a young man. already a fellow of the Royal Society and a contributor t o its Philosophzcal Transactzons, should have his curiosity aroused by the ruddy colour of the bones of the madder-fed pork, and that he should resolve, on returning t o his home, to make further inquiries before bringing this strange matter before the Fellows of the Society. He desired, first of all, t o make certain that it was madder and no other substance which stained living bones, and hence he began to feed some of his fowls with madder. One cock, subjected to this treatment-fed by force, for fowls refuse food mixed with madder-died at the end of a sixteen days' course ) the bones were stained, even those with the densest structure. Early in the autumn he made a communication to the Royal Society. which was subsequently printed in its Transactzons.f
Having duly recorded this strange action of madder on bones, Belchier felt that his inquiry was finished, and left the matter there. The man who was t o show that Belcher had discovered a means of unravelling the complex manner in which bones grow, was a remarkable French squire-Henri Louis Duhamel, Seigneur du Monceau-but of him more anon. For Belchier there was no problem of bone growth. 13s master and teacher, the great Cheselden, knew all there was t o be known about bones -particularly so far as concerned those of the human skeleton. Bones " are covered by a fine membrane, which upon the skull is called pericranium, elsewhere periosteum. It serves for the muscies to slide easily * Three lectures of a course on " The Anatomical and Physio1op;lcal Pnnciples under-1y1r.g the Treatment of Injuries t o Muscles, Joints, and Bones," delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. t Phil. TTans., voi. xxxix, p. 287 * The Anafomy of the Human Body, by William Cheselden, 6th edition, 1741.