The color of light Here is the materials science connection. Understanding how pigments such as the chrome yellow and pink madder used by Homer in his watercolor respond to light and/or time can only be achieved using sensitive – preferably nonor minimally destructive – analysis techniques familiar to any materials scientist. Chemical analysis of the watercolor using surface enhanced Raman spec...

This paper discusses colorants found in Tumulus MM, the tomb of King Midas or his father, at Gordion, capital Phrygian kingdom. Chromophores, colorants, and auxiliaries are preserved largely independent textiles they once colored. The MM now fragmentary due to degradation processes that occurred inside chamber. For DHA 26 (Vienna, Austria, 2007), we discussed a group golden-yellow fragments fro...

Photo-induced luminescence imaging techniques, such as UV-induced visible luminescence (UVL) and the more recently developed technique of visible-induced infrared luminescence (VIL), have been invaluable for the study of ancient polychromy, allowing the detection and mapping of luminescent materials, such as varnishes, consolidants, organic binders, and crucially, traces of pigments, organic an...

The methods used by Virchow which led to his work on cellular pathology are more akin to those of the cytologist than the morbid anatomist. The year 1858 is also notable for the first satisfactory staining of a histological section by Joseph von Gerlach (Fig. 1), as the result of a fortunate accident (Gerlach, 1858a and b). One evening, thanks to an oversight, he left cerebellum fixed in potass...

The major question, however, is why did the shifts occur when they did? Midelfort does not leave us guessing here. One cannot, he insists, argue that madness was becoming medicalized, or that "physicians were more knowledgeable or humane in 1600 than a century earlier". Other, more political considerations drove the transition from confinement to care. In an age of nascent bureaucratization, as...

Since Stephen Hales (1769) demonstrated that the distance separating holes pierced through the leg and shin bone of a half-grown chick did not increase despite the increase in length of the whole leg, subsequent investigators, including Hunter (1837), Dubreuil (1913), Haas (1926), Payton (1932) and Lacroix (1949), have established that the epiphysial cartilage is the main site of growth in leng...

The experimental study of bone growth and repair began with Belchier’s observation in 1736 of the staining with madder root of bones in vito. This technique was used by such men as Duhamel and John Hunter, and, with the development of the microscope, morphological studies on bone were carried out by Goodsir, Oilier, Macewen and many others (Keith 1919). A more recent review of these and of late...

Previous investigations on the structure and growth of long bones have been made by many and varied techniques. As early as 1727 Hales first demonstrated experimentally by drilling holes to act as markers that in the growing bone the markers always remained at the same distance apart and that there was therefore no interstitial growth. This has been subsequently confirmed by many workers using ...