282 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



returned to the incubator. Twenty hours after, a great number of 

 new and collateral vessels, strangely divergent from the natural ones, 

 had been formed, to meet, as it were, the damage done by the premature 

 breaking of the shell. All these vessels had nothing but globules in 

 their composition, and were easily obliterated by moving the point of 

 a needle in their midst. 



Other facts of healing might be compared with embryo growth. 

 If a tendon was ruptured, or a bone broken, great heat attended the 

 first stage of reparation. In all parts the heat of the first stage of 

 healing was above that of the neighbouring parts. These facts 

 corresjiond with the heat necessary for the growth of the fii'st blood- 

 vessels in the egg. Blood-vessels of the embryo were destroyed by 

 the gentlest handling, so likewise the new vessels in a healing sore, 

 bled at the lightest touch. 



In the embryo, colourless elements of blood constitute the first 

 vessels ; so, also, in the new vessels of healing parts. All parts of 

 the embryo were more vascular than afterwards, when growth was 

 further advanced: so with healing parts, granulations were, at first, 

 more vascular than they were when turning into fibrous tissue. It 

 took longer to repair a broken bone than it did to rej)air a ruptured 

 tendon, which again was longer in healing than a wound in the skin, 

 because in embryo growth, tendons were comj)leted later than skin, and 

 bones later than tendons. 



It was well known that inflammation preceded granulation : what 

 had it to do with healing ? When fully-formed blood-vessels were 

 called upon to contribute to healing, a change took place in their coats 

 from elastic fibrous to fragile globular tissue, a kind of retrogression 

 to the embryo state. The change might be said to do them violence, 

 as it altered their state of cohesion and elasticity to one of fragility. 

 Hence the pain of inflammation, demanding quiescence in parts 

 preparing for healing. New blood-vessels for reparation could not 

 possibly partake of the circulation without this change in the coats of 

 the existing vessels. At the commencement of inflammation, blood 

 has been seen depositing its colouidess globules upon the interior of the 

 vessels ; these globules or cells, gradually accumulating, at length 

 interpose between the stream of red blood and the elastic coats of the 

 vessels, and substitute a fragile globular form or fibrous tissue. 

 Vessels so altered were virtually embryonic, prepared to set oif new 

 vessels and new growths. Inflammation was the necessary preliminary 

 to granulation. The two main constituents of the body were the solid 

 parts and the blood. Injury to the latter was as fertile a source of 

 inflammation as to the former. In extreme parts the antecedents of an 

 injury could be seen, and the form, extent, and gravity of inflammatory 

 action was measured by the triviality or gravity of the damage done. 

 But in all that relates to blood-poisoning, the antecedents and the 

 amount of damage done were hidden from view, but inferences might 

 be drawn conversely. When small-j^ox was passing away through a 

 moderate number of kindly pustules, and scarlet fever through a series 

 of cuticular exfoliations, and in other fevers, when the crisis was 

 moderate in type and duration, wc might infer that no great damage 



