"This book is the culmination of decades of personal and scientific curiosity, inquiry, and study of the human body, specifically, its internal architecture : the skeleton. The human body's ability to adjust to insults resulting from disease, genetics, development, the environment, and trauma is beyond 'incredible.' It is more closely akin to the miraculous. Many of these insults are life-changing; some are life-ending. The term "incredible" here applies to the rarity, severity, or unusual location of insult and/or resorption. Equally important is the ability of these bones to educate scientists about the body's capabilities to mitigate the effects of disease and trauma, and of genetic and environmental factors. Incredible Bones is based on the perspective of two experienced scientists. Their shared goal is to better understand the human skeleton and to compile an accurate photographic and historical document of a small portion of the vast osteological collection at the Narrenturm Museum. Commonly referred to as the "Fool's Tower," the Narrenturm is located in Vienna, Austria (Figures 1-6). This comparative atlas records and shares some of the most incredible skeletal malformations and the wide range of variability and severity that can afflict the humanskeleton, before and after the advent of antibiotics. It captures examples of disease, malformations, and trauma with little or no surgical or medical intervention and reveals their natural progression, often, without treatment. It is not intended to be a comprehensive atlas of medical or anatomical curiosities"--