[en] With californium-252 it is easy to obtain a high neutron flux of the order of 10⁹n/s. The mean energy of this radiation, which is close on 2 MeV, activates calcium very well. The authors describe a storage and irradiator unit with a 100 μg californium source, with which it will henceforth be possible to develop this technique of measuring the calcium of the hand in a hospital. The test programme has three distinct phases: (1) irradiation of the biological target for 10 min; (2) after a transfer period of 30 s, detection of the radiation emitted by the ⁴⁹Ca for 600 s; (3) processing of the numerical data received, which are transmitted on line to a T 1600 calculator. The weight is found by comparing the activity induced in the unknown calcium mass with that induced in a phantom chosen as the activity standard. The reproducibility of the method is of the order of 3% (5% at the worst). The gross standardized result is edited automatically. For physical and clinical reasons, the hand is chosen as the reference part of the body in 70 control subjects. The local irradiation dose is less than 2 rem. The bone calcium content is 14.3+-1.9 g in men and 10.1+-1.3 g in women. In clinical application of the technique it is necessary to differentiate between the normal calcium content and the calcium content found with a pathological state. This makes it necessary to express the measurement in the form of a volume mass (rho). The volume of the hand skeleton (V in cm³) is calculated from the corresponding bone surface (S in cm²) measured by planimetry with the relationship V=8.925 exp 0.0205.S, found after studying 80 hand skeletons. In our control subjects the calcium bone volume mass was 0.288 g/cm³ in men and 0.282 g/cm³ in women. There is a very significant difference (p<0.001) in a population of 88 subjects with chronic renal insufficiencies at the terminal stage: rho=0.233 in men and 0.235 in women