This may not be a great question for the squeamish. You have been warned.
My wife recently had a hip replacement. The surgeon asked if she’d like to keep the femoral head as a souvenir, and she said yes. It was dutifully handed over after the surgery (in a plastic cup inside multiple layers of plastic bags with “biohazard” markings).
Afterward…I jokingly remarked that she should give it to a bone carver so she could get some kind of jewelry made - a ring, perhaps, or earrings, or whatever. Well, I thought it was a joke, but she’s actually quite keen on the idea.
So, trying to look at this practically…how do I go about cleaning and drying the bone, first? It’s still fairly, er, damp. And has little bits of flesh attached, actually. I’ve rinsed it off under the tap, but now… Should I just put it out in the sun to dry? I’m a bit concerned about flies. But I’m not sure what else to do!
The whole issue of finding a bone carver who’s prepared to handle human bone is another issue entirely, of course.
Well, cleaning vertebrate bones for preservation is definitely not for the squeamish.
Probably the two most standard method used by biologists are maceration and cleaning by dermestid beetles. I have used both, and both are pretty yucky.
In maceration, you use bacteria to do the work. Basically it’s controlled putrefaction.
Museums tend to use cleaning by dermestid beetles, but this depends on having some of the little suckers available.
If you just dry it, and leave the flesh attached, the flesh can still rot in the future if it gets wet again. So it’s better to get rid of the flesh by letting it rot now.
Actually, letting flies lay eggs on it would be a good way to clean it, since the maggots would clean off any remaining flesh.
Many taxidermists around here (Montana USA) advertise that they use the beetles. Find a taxidermist who does English mounts this way and is willing to take on a human bone.
One of my more memorable experiences in my undergraduate days was volunteering to help macerate monkey skeletons in the Anthropology Department. It involved picking bones out of fetid pots of putrescent liquid using rubber gloves.
As a reward we got to attend a holiday party at the faculty members house, which was the first time I had cheese fondue. The texture was sort of like the stuff in the maceration pots. :eek:
I’ve known fishermen who threw shark jaws into fire ant piles. I think that they dug into the pile a bit and put something over the pile to keep predators from carrying the jaws away. I’m sure that the ants did a more coarse job than dermestid beetles, but the price was right.
This is interesting. Years ago when I had my wisdom teeth removed, I wanted to keep them as souvenirs, but my request was denied; they had a specific disposal policy for excised body tissues, and it didn’t make allowances for little, seemingly innocuous things like teeth.
Huh, the oral surgeon let me keep mine - I had them out about 27 years ago. They just handed me a small envelope with 4 gauze wrapped teeth in it right after the procedure. I’ve still got them.
Put it in a pot of water and boil for a couple hours or so. Any flesh that hasn’t fallen off by then can be easily scraped off. Then let the bone dry off.
As a bonus, the water remaining in the pot can be used as the basis for some good soup.
Long pig & lentils, or femur with fettuccine noodles, perhaps?
Boiling will soften tissue on the outside of the head so it can be scraped off, but you won’t be able to scrape enough of it off to keep it from smelling later on. Besides, there are lots of holes in a femoral head (particularly in the case of a female old enough to require a hip replacement) and you won’t be able to scrape the tissue out from the inside.
It’s actually quite different. The femoral head has a lot of heavily anchored connective tissue, not all of which will have been removed during an arthroplasty.
