A 17th-century Russian nobleman named Butterlijn had a bone to pick with his surgeon. Butterlijn, the story goes, had been struck in the head with a sword, and his surgeon repaired the injury by transplanting a piece of dog bone into Butterlijn’s skull. He survived, only to be excommunicated by his church because he was deemed no longer fully human. Butterlijn demanded that the surgeon take the dog bone back out; when the surgeon tried, he found that Butterlijn’s skull had regrown around it. By some accounts, it was the first successful bone transplant.
People have been using foreign materials to repair damaged bones for millennia — there’s evidence of patch jobs in Neolithic Peru and ancient Egypt, though they used other materials like gold and iron instead of actual bone. While Butterlijn is the first person we know of to receive an actual donated bone, he was far from the last. Around a million people receive tissues donations every year in the US alone, according to the CDC, including many bone donations — you might know someone who’s walking around with pieces of a dead stranger’s bones somewhere in their body. It just doesn’t get talked about much.
I only found out that bone transplants existed the morning after my dad died, when my mom informed me that she’d agreed to donate the long bones in his arms and legs. It freaked me out. I’m an organ donor, and my dad had gotten a lung transplant before he died, so I know how tissue donations can help to save lives. But bone donation felt more jarring than giving up soft organs like hearts and kidneys. Bones are supposed to stick around for years, “Alas, poor Yorick”-style — they’re the remains that remain. While I knew that his bones weren’t doing my dad any good, I didn’t love the idea of them being anywhere but with him.
So, I did what any normal person processing a loved one’s death would do — I attempted to trace the journey my dad’s bones went on.
