The Uniqueness 

 of the Individual 



1. INTRODUCTION 



Philosophy and common sense, though often parted, have long 

 agreed about the uniqueness of individual man. Different men 

 have different faces, sizes, shapes and origins; different apti- 

 tudes, skills and predilections; and different ambitions, hopes 

 and fears. Science now makes it a trio of concordant voices, for 

 the uniqueness of individual mice and men is a proposition 

 which science can demonstrate with equal force, perhaps with 

 deeper cogency, and certainly with a hundred times as much 

 precision. For reasons that will not become apparent until 

 later, I shall begin what I have to say wdth some observations 

 on the repair of burns. 



Deep and extensive burns are injuries which cannot heal 

 properly of their own accord. What happens when a severe 

 burn is left to heal by its own devices is, in outline, this. The 

 skin which has been killed by burning eventually sloughs away; 

 its place is taken by a spongy, moist, highly vascular tissue of 

 repair called granulation tissue. Repair, such as it is, is brought 

 about by two concurrent processes. The epithelial cells which 

 form the outermost layer of the skin creep inwards over the 

 surface of the granulation tissue, and as they do so, the granu- 

 lation tissue begins to form connective tissue fibres similar in 

 individual make-up to those which form the leathery layer of 



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