This is the last drawing in the Anatomy atlas that is about skeleton.

Pelvis is most ingenous in many ways. Not only is the hip joint  bearing most of the weight, it is second most flexible joint in human body, with three axes of freedom just like the shoulder joint, only in lesser degree. Further the whole structure must be flexible enough to allow for birth.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Today’s stories ar more sad than interesting and they are both about the skeleton we used for learning.

When teaching assistant brought the box with skeleton in the class her emphasised ” These are not casts, these are real bones. Please be aware that you are handling the remains of a real human being, so treat them with dignity. Memento mori – you too shall perish.”.

I was wondering why he feels the need to say that, we are all adults over twenty years of age, surely we need not be reminded of that like some adolescents? Well, not long after he has left the class one future gym teacher was showing off in front of a few of his laughing female classmates with a femur used as a microphone for pretend singing. My opinion of them all dropped significantly and I never forgot that sight. That was one of many proofs that in every social gathering will inevitably be someone who insist on being an asshole and someone who enables them in being an asshole.

Second story is about the dead man himself. He did not have completely fused os sacrum, with the top vertebra being free. And his whole pelvis was assymetrical and deformed on one side, with the openning for nervus ischiadicus being pinched and ground between that free vertebra and the fused rest. The teaching assistant told us that the man must have suffered from immense pain his whole life and that this was assumed to be the reason why he dies at relatively young age with probable cause of death being suicide by means of unknown poison. Whenever I remember that story I wish he had better options to deal with that problem.