ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 693 



which it manifests ? A grave problem, which Claude Bernard, in his 

 admirable " Report on the Progress of Physiology," seems to us to 

 have solved. That savant holds that the brain of the animal subjected 

 to the experiment of transfusion of the blood acts like a complicated 

 piece of mechanism upon the restoration of the blood belonging to it : 

 the cerebral organ is only the instrument of the intellect, and the hu- 

 man machine marks life, as a clock marks time. 



A physiological dissection, like that which transfusion of blood may 

 be said, in some sort, to perform upon the glandular, nervous, and 

 muscular systems, how complete soever it may be, has no value, unless 

 the results of the analysis are combined ; the experimental cutting up 

 of the human body ought to end by recomposing the whole of it. 

 That is the mode of procedure in the physical sciences. The colorless 

 beam of white light is separated through the prism as it is by the 

 drops of water that form the rainbow, and after passing through the 

 glass it spreads into a wonderful gathering of colored rays. Each ray 

 is studied in its properties, calorific, chemic, or luminous ; then, when 

 the work of analysis is ended, another prism directs all these rays in 

 an inverse course toward convergence and the beam of colorless light 

 is re-formed. It is so with the organism and its constituent parts. 

 The individual life of the glands, the muscles, the nerves, the brain, 

 is demonstrated by the aid of local transfusion, and the synthesis of 

 the living being is accomplished at once by general transfusion. The 

 blood coming from the heart is disti'ibuted into all parts of the body, 

 no longer confined by art in a fixed space ; thus the partial lives of the 

 tissues and organs are simultaneously renewed, and the life of the in- 

 dividual becomes an admirable collective unity. 



These important results, which the physiologist regards from the 

 high point of view of theory, the physician meets on practical ground 

 and in his patient's presence. And clinical triumphs have confirmed 

 scientific views, which find their reasonable explanation partly in our 

 knowledge of the normal life of the elements, partly in the morbid 

 changes they are subject to. Transfusion of blood has sometimes 

 served as an heroic remedy for arterial haemorrhages, and losses of blood 

 occurring after confinement. In these situations there is no injury to 

 the elements of the nervous tissues, the glands and muscles ; thus the 

 supply of new blood restores life to them ; it is replenishing a lamp, 

 with its machinery all in order. When, on the contrary, the glands, 

 muscles, and nerves, are changed in the first place, and the injury to 

 the blood is the consequence of alteration in the tissues, instead of 

 being its cause, transfusion cannot be as serviceable ; it is almost 

 always powerless ; and, to repeat our comparison, the process is like 

 pouring oil into a lamp more or less out of order in its inner con- 

 struction. 



Transfusion is not only employed to replace blood lost by a pa- 

 tient, but used also to substitute pure for vitiated blood. It is success- 



