The Stronger Break

When German orthopedic surgeon Julius Wolff published his landmark findings in 1892, he described something that seems almost impossible: bone that breaks and heals often becomes denser — stronger — at the very site of the fracture. We now call this Wolff's Law. The body responds to a break by flooding the area with osteoblasts, microscopic bone-building cells that lay down new tissue in a temporary structure called a callus.…