Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Calcium Apatites and Other Calcium
Orthophosphates
1.1
Introduction
Due to abundance in nature and presence in living organisms,
calcium apatites [1] and other calcium orthophosphates remain the
chemical compounds of a special interest in many fields of science,
including geology, chemistry, biology, and medicine. Because of big
problems with accessing to the scientific literature published in the
nineteenth century and before, a historical description of the subject
appears to be both fragmental and incomplete. Namely, according to
the accessible literature [2], as early as in the end of the eighteenth
century, a French chemist Joseph-Louis Proust (1754-1826) and
a German chemist Martin Klaproth (1743-1817) proposed that
calcium apatite was the major inorganic component of bones. In the
middle of the nineteenth century, attempts to establish the chemical
composition of calcium apatites and other calcium orthophosphates
were performed by J. Berzelius [3], R. Warington Jr. [4] and R.
Fresenius [5]. The chemical formula of perfectly transparent crystals
of natural fluorapatite (FA) as Ca
F was established in 1873
[6], while the crystallographic faces of a natural calcium apatite were
described in 1883 [7]. Furthermore, a paper on a behavior of an
undisclosed calcium orthophosphate in organisms of carnivores was
published in 1883 [8]. Further, the quantitative analysis of a calcium
orthophosphate was performed in 1884 [9], followed by remarks by
(PO
)
5
4
3
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