Vascular Spaces in Compact Bone

O_>ld bones are often discolored by the grime that infiltrates spaces in the matrix once occupied by blood vessels. This suggested that allowing dry bone to absorb colorants might be a useful way to show the three dimensional complexity of bone vascularization. We have developed a simple way to show blood vessel spaces in bone at a glance through a stereomicroscope. The procedure shows that the structure of bone described by artists in histology textbooks overlooks the sheets of capillary networks separating peripheral layers of laminar bone. It is surprising that this gross error has never been corrected, since even a cursory inspection of most long bones shows that capillary sheets are a dominant feature of bone architecture. In this article, we: