4 THE TONER LECTURES. 



communication; comprehending wounds of all kinds, and 

 compound fractures. 



" Bruises which have destroyed the life of the part may be 

 considered as a third kind ; partaking, at the beginning, of the 

 nature of the first, but finally terminating like the second. 



" The injuries of the first division, in Vv-hich the parts do not 

 communicate externally, seldom inflame ; while those of the 

 second commonly both inflame and suppurate."' 



Here there is a law of the reparative process in these two 

 great classes of injuries. "In these sentences," observes Sir 

 James Paget, " Hunter has embodied the principle on which 

 is founded the whole practice of s^ibcutaneous surgery ; a 

 principle, of which, indeed, it seems hardly possible to exagge- 

 rate the importance."^ It is a remarkable fact that Hunter 

 never applied this law to surgical practice, at least, so far as 

 we are aware ; but it is interesting to know that, in the 

 experiments he performed on animals for the purpose of 

 Investigating the reparative process in tendons^ (some of the 

 preparations from which are pi'eserved in the museum of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons), Hunter divided the tendons 

 subcutaneously in some instances, and by open-wound in 

 others, for the sake of comparing the diflTerences in the 

 reparative process. In "The Life of John Hunter," by Drewry 

 Ottlej^, it is stated that in the year 1767, Hunter ruptured 

 his Achilles tendon, whilst dancing, and this accident led him 

 to examine into the process by which divided tendons are 

 reunited. " He divided the same tendon in several dogs, by 

 introducing a couching-needle under the skin at some distance 

 from it, and killed the dogs at different periods to see the 

 progress of the union, which was found to be similar to that 



' See " Hunter's Works," by J. F. Palmer, vol. iii. p. 240. 



2 " Lectures on Surgical Pathology," London, 1853. 



3 The Works of Hunter, with notes, by J. F. Palmer, page 34 ; Lon- 

 don, 1837, 



