Bone vessels and cartilage. In the human body at birth, there are over 270 bones, but many of these fuse together during development, leaving a total of 206 separate bones in the adult, not counting numerous small sesamoid bones. The largest bone in the body is the femur or thigh-bone, and the smallest is the stapes in the middle ear. The Greek word for bone is ὀστέον ("osteon"), hence the many terms that use it as a prefix – such as osteopathy. Bone is not uniformly solid, but consists of a flexible matrix (about 30%) and bound minerals (about 70%) which
Bone wax can be spread easily with minimal adhesion to surgical gloves. The bone putty requires no kneading prior to application and does not soften appreciably at body temperature. The FDA has recently approved a new water-soluble bone hemostasis material called Ostene, which is designed to look and feel like bone wax. This material comprises a sterile mixture of water-soluble alkylene oxide copolymers, derived from ethylene oxide and propylene oxide. These copolymers have a long history in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, and they are considered inert. These compounds are not metabolized, but eliminated from the body unchanged. Bone wax Bone wax