ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 



conceived the idea of applying over such wounds a shred 

 of healthy skin, taken from the injured subject himself or 

 from some other person. The first attempts were under- 

 taken in 1869, in the Paris hospitals, and were crowned 

 with full success. Numerous experiments were at once 

 made. Gosseliri, Guy on, Oilier, Duplay, Hergott, and 

 others, in France, obtained very satisfactory results. Eng- 

 lish, Russian, and German practitioners did not hesitate to 

 contribute their share of confirmatory observations, and we 

 may be allowed to say that at this day epidermic grafting 

 has taken a definite place in surgical practice. This does 

 not prevent the admission that it presents difficulties of 

 more than one kind. This application of shreds of foreign 

 substance to the denuded surface of a wound requires ex- 

 treme delicacy of attention on the part of the surgeon 

 who proposes to effect it. In the first place, an attempt to 

 cover the entire wound by one single grafting would not 

 succeed ; several slips of very small dimensions must be 

 applied, the progress of cicatrization must be watched day 

 by day, the strips that fail to adhere replaced, etc. Usual- 

 ly the graft is complete at the end of twenty-four hours. 

 At that time the transferred part forms one body with the 

 wound, by the intervention of cells produced in the inter- 

 space between them. It thus follows that cicatrization is 

 completed very rapidly. The scar is firmer and more pliant 

 than the ordinary ones, and does not exhibit, as they do, 

 any disposition to contract. 1 



The name given to this process, " epidermic graft," is 

 not quite precise. In reality, the strips used in such a 

 case are not composed of epidermis alone ; to procure 

 them, the epidermis is detached in connection with the thin 



1 Grafts on men have been made not only of human skin but of skin 

 borrowed from animals also. Dubreuil has lately performed some curi- 

 ous experiments on this subject. He has grafted Guinea-pig's skin upon 

 a man. 



