CARRARA MARBLE 



1201 



CARRIAGE 



particularly by Villa. See MEXICO, subtitle His- 

 tory; VILLA, FRANCISCO. 



CARRARA, kahrah'rah, MARBLE, the fine, 

 white, crystalline limestone from which the 

 most famous statues of the world have been 

 made. This sugar-grained material is valued 

 not only for its pure white beauty, but also 

 for its smoothness when polished. The moun- 

 tains which yield this valued marble surround 

 the city of Carrara in Northern Italy and reach 

 a height of over 5,000 feet. Many sculptors 

 work there to save the expense of shipping the 

 marble. Although the Carrara quarries have 

 been worked for 2,000 years, they having fur- 

 nished the material for the Pantheon at Rome, 

 the supply is still practically inexhaustible. 

 These quarries employ about 10,000 men. 

 Illustrations showing the quarries at Carrara 

 appear with the article MARBLE. 



CARREL, kair'el, ALEXIS (1873- ), a 

 French biologist and surgeon, famous for his 

 experiments concerning the nature and proc- 

 esses of animal life. Dr. Carrel was born in 

 France, received his professional training there, 

 and first won distinction as a surgeon at the 

 University of Lyons. But it was in the United 

 States, to which he went in 1905, that he 

 carried on the experiments which made him 

 world-famous and won for him the Nobel 

 Prize in medicine for 1912 (see NOBEL PRIZE). 

 As fellow of the Rockefeller Institution for 

 Medical Research, a position he held from 

 1909 to 1914, he made some of the most 

 important discoveries in the history of medicine 

 and biology. He kept alive certain organs of 

 dead animals, and thus proved that many 

 organs, such as the heart or the stomach, may 

 live and carry on their functions even after 

 the death of the body. Thus he proved a 

 difference between general death, which ends 

 the life of a distinctive animal or person, and 

 elemental death, which ends the life of its 

 tissues. These discoveries suggested the pos- 

 sibility that dead or defective organs could 

 be replaced by sound, live ones. Dr. Carrel 

 successfully transplanted veins and arteries, 

 kidneys and even blood-vessels, all of which 

 were kept alive in cold storage. 



Not only has he kept separate organs alive, 

 but he has kept alive separate cells apart from 

 the organs of which they were once parts. He 

 has demonstrated that these separate cells 

 will grow independently of each other if they 

 are given proper nourishment, and also that 

 their growth can be stimulated from two to 

 forty times by adding what he calls tissue 

 76 



juice. This juice is derived from the tissues 

 of animals, and Dr. Carrel found that the 

 juice of a certain animal produced quicker 

 growth when applied to another animal of the 

 same species than when applied to cells of 

 any other species. These experiments and dis- 

 coveries may result in new methods for treat- 

 ing injuries and diseases, but Dr. Carrel's 

 work along these lines came to a temporary 

 halt in 1914, when he returned to his native 

 land to serve as surgeon in its army in the 

 War of the Nations. In France, however, his 

 work among the wounded led to his discovery 

 of a new method of sterilizing deep wounds. 

 This consists in the continuous irrigation of 

 infected wounds with a solution of bleaching 

 powder neutralized with soda mixed with bo- 

 racic acid. Washing continues for several days 

 until the wound is found to be disinfected. See 

 WAR OF THE NATIONS. 



Among his numerous scientific treatises 

 are: The Preservation of Tissues and Its 

 Application to Surgery; The Surgery oj Blood 

 Vessels; Results of a Replantation of the 

 Thigh; and The Transplantation of Veins and 

 Organs. 



CARRIAGE, kair'ij, a word derived from the 

 Latin carrus, meaning a chariot, and now 

 applied to a wheeled vehicle for the conveyance 

 of passengers, as distinct from those used for 

 transportation of freight. The first vehicle 

 used in ancient times was probably somewhat 

 in the form of a sleigh light enough to be 

 drawn over the ground. Then came the nar- 

 row, two-wheeled war chariot, from which 

 have been gradually evolved the light, springed 

 vehicles of the present day. The heavy, broad- 

 rimmed wheels of the chariot have given 

 place to narrow, rubber-covered wheels, run- 

 ning on steel axles with ball bearings. Car- 

 riages have assumed a great variety of shapes 

 as the result of individual fancy or the neces- 

 sities of existing roads. From the very earliest 

 ages the use of carriages was regarded as a 

 luxury in Europe and from time to time laws 

 were passed restricting their use. At the 

 present time a tax must be paid on all 

 vehicles in England used for other than purely 

 commercial purposes. 



Carriages may now be divided into two 

 classes those with two wheels and those with 

 four. The carriage- and coach-making in- 

 dustries have suffered greatly since the intro- 

 duction of dependable, low-priced automobiles, 

 the use of the latter having greatly increased 

 in all cities and having almost driven the 



