Photo via McGill.ca from the Maude Abbott Medical Museum
This isn’t part of an ancient weapon or a stake dug out of a vampire burial. This is actually a sequestrum of a femur removed from a private who served during the Civil War. A sequestrum is a piece of dead (necrosed) bone that lacks blood supply and becomes separated from healthy, normal bone. The private was wounded and suffered a musketball injury to his knee on May 22, 1864, and the leg was amputated a week later. In July a surgeon at his hospital observed the large piece of necrosed bone in the amputated leg. Subsequently a tubular sequestrum was removed and it measured almost nine inches long! The smooth part of the bone at the bottom is where the leg was originally amputated.
Read more at:
The Maude Abbott Medical Museum
Categories: Archaeology, History
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