368 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



world to this valuable resource. These gentlemen demonstrated that 

 the injection of blood into the veins of an animal exhausted by hemor- 

 rhage, reanimated and restored the quasi-corpse, provided that the blood 

 thus introduced was derived from an individual of the same species, 

 and that it consequently was endued with the same physical and chem- 

 ical properties. Under the influence of these beautiful and conclusive 

 experiments, several trials of the transfusion took place in England and 

 in Germany, between 1825 and 1834. We can reckon up ten ; others 

 have perhaps escaped our recollection. In all, of which we have been 

 able to consult the records published by the profession, death appeared 

 imminent and unavoidable ; and in all, under the influence, apparently 

 at least, of the transfusion of youthful and healthy blood, the patients 

 were restored to life, more or less promptly, but in general very rapidly. 

 In all cases, with one exception, the operation was applied to young 

 women, sinking inconsequence of excessive loss of blood." 



EXPERIMENTS ON CADAVERIC RIGIDITY, BY BROWN SEQUARD. 



FOLLOWING up the researches on which he has been for some time 

 engaged, the author has ascertained that if a current of arterial blood 

 be reestablished through muscles in which cadaveric rigidity has al- 

 ready begun to show itself, they cease to be rigid and recover their 

 irritability. He found that when he connected the aorta and vena 

 cava of the body of a rabbit in which the cadaveric rigidity had already 

 manifested itself for between ten and twenty minutes, with the corre- 

 sponding vessels of a living rabbit, so as to reestablish the circulation 

 in the lower extremities, the rigidity disappeared in from six to ten 

 minutes, and that, in two or three minutes afterwards, muscular con- 

 tractions took place w T hcn the nerve-trunks were irritated. These ex- 

 periments have been repeated in various ways with the same results ; 

 and they fully justify the opinion of those who maintain that cadaveric 

 rigidity is a vital phenomenon, and not an indication of the death of 

 the muscles, which does not take place until the rigidity passes off. 

 He has even succeeded in removing the cadaveric rigidity from the 

 muscles of the decapitated body of a criminal, thirteen hours after ex- 

 ecution, and two hours after the supervention of the rigidity. By the 

 infusion of blood fresh from his own veins into the radial artery, at a 

 slight distance above the wrist, the muscles of the hand, which had 

 before been rigid, became pliant and irritable. Of the nineteen mus- 

 cles of the hand, twelve regained a very lively irritability, and three of 

 them became so irritable that, under the influence of mechanical excita- 

 tion, they contracted throughout their whole length. The irritability 

 thus reawakened at nine o'clock, lasted until midnight in the greater 

 part of the muscles. On the morrow morning at six o'clock death was 

 definitively confirmed, and new injections could produce no efiect. 

 Gazette Medicale. 



REMEDY FOR NEAR-SIGHTEDNESS. 



AMONG the countless inventions of the day is a curious contrivance 

 by Mr. J. Ball, of New York, for the cure of imperfect vision. The 



