,1820.} Roi/al Academy of Sciences. '65 



rmight be expected from the small quantity of the fluids extracted 



by their use. Leeches, although drawing out much more blood, 



have frequently by no means the same success ; and moreover 



dry cupping, or the mere application of the exhausted glasses, 



produces in many cases the same effect as when scarification is 



.also used. This remedy has proved successful in many local 



-congestions, accompanied with irritation and fixed pains, aiid 



. generally in phlegmatic or partial inflammations either acute or 



■chronic. When properly appHed, it has allayed the symptoms 



caused by difficult dentition, has occasioned palpitations of the 



•ieart to disappear, and has stopped uterine haemorrhages. 



The most surprising and most honourable operation of surgery 

 is without any contradiction that executed by M. Richerand, by 

 >i;3king away a part of the ribs and of the pleura. The patient 

 was himself a medical man, and not ignorant of the danger he 

 ran in this operation being had recourse to, but he also knew 

 that his disorder was otherwise incurable. He was attacked 

 with a cancer on the internal surface of the ribs and of the 

 pleura, which continually produced enormous fungosities, that 

 had been in vain attempted to be repressed by the actual 

 •cautery. M. Richerand was obhged to lay the ribs bare, to 

 saw away two, to detach them from the pleura, and to cut awaiy 

 'all the cancerous part of that membrane. As soon as he had 

 . made the opening, the air rushing into the chest occasioned the 

 .first day great suffering and distressing shortness of breath ; the 

 surgeon could touch and see the heart through the pericardiuna, 

 which was as transparent as glass, and could assure him- 

 self of the total insensibility of both. Much serous fluid flowed 

 from the wound, as long as it remained open, but it filled up 

 slowly by means of the adhesion of the lung with the pericardium, 

 and the fleshy granulations that were formed in it. At length 

 the patient got so well that on the twenty-seventh day after the 

 -operation he could not resist the desire of going to the Medicinal 

 School to see the fragments of the ribs that had been taken from 

 him, and in three or four days afterwards, he returned home, 

 .and went about his ordinary business. 



The success of M. Richerand is the more important, because 

 rit will authorize in other cases, enterprizes, which, according to 

 ^received opinions, would appear impossible ; and we shall be less 

 afraid of penetrating into the interior of the chest. 



M. Richerand even hopes that by opening the pericardium 

 itself, and using proper injections, we may cure a disease that 

 lias hitherto been always fatal, the dropsy of that cavity. 



The cataract is a species of blindness that arises from the 

 ■crystaUine lens of the eye losing its transparency, and from the 

 :inost ancient times, the art of curing it has been known, either 

 J}y extracting the vitiated crystalline through an opening made in 

 the cornea, or by displacing this lens by means of a needle put 

 into the eye, and thus leaving a free entrance to the rays of 

 Vol. XVI. N° I. E 



