This book deals with those disorders of the skeleton associated with known biochemical abnormalities of its components. It comprehensively covers common polygenic and rare monogenic disorders and emphasizes the new advances which have been made in bone cell biology and in human skeletal disease particularly as a result of molecular medicine. This has been achieved within an easily readable and well-illustrated book. It is written for the postgraduate and clinician who finds disorders of the skeleton mysterious and for whom an understandable explanation is not always available. It will be of particular interest to those who look after patients with a wide variety of metabolic bone diseases, including rheumatologists, endocrinologists and orthopedic surgeons, and contains new information of interest to pediatricians and geneticists. This branch of medicine is currently not well taught and even the experienced clinician may not have encountered some of these disorders.