io8 PHYSIC 



wounds," and the production of cicatrisation in all cases 

 of trauma, and should be allowed a "fair field," and as 

 much "favour," as can be afforded, under the manifold 

 conditions of its vital work, on the reunion, restoration of 

 divided and more or less destroyed texture, and the new 

 growth of substitutional tissue. 



It may be remarked here that after excessive burns, 

 where the systemic sensory nervature has been completely 

 destroyed, and where, therefore, the new skin or scar tissue 

 matrix is absolutely due to sympathetic materio-dynamic 

 agency, the texture of that skin is irregular in outline, 

 delicate and thin in histological character, sensitive to 

 irritant influences, apt to contract and liable to suffer from 

 ulcerative breakdown and keloid growth, all of which 

 negative circumstances accentuate the importance of the 

 presence of the peripheral systemic nervous system, as an 

 external histological blend, for the sympathetic peripheral 

 neuro-dermal elements to ally themselves with in all 

 renewals of dermal tissue. 



The restoration of function must be sought after in 

 every case of trauma by the exact apposition, as far as 

 possible, of the divided ends of the disunited textures, 

 be they skin, nerve, muscle, or bone, organ or viscus, and 

 the renewal of material and dynamic continuity : as far as 

 possible, we say, because in the union of systemic nerve 

 ends especially, there exist often insuperable difficulties, 

 nevertheless, even then there seems a power inherent in 

 or begotten of the materio-dynamic compact between the 

 two nervous systems of passing nerve impulses across 

 neutral barriers of cicatricial tissue laid down in the tracks 

 of traumatism by the ever-watchful and inventive vis 

 medicatrix nature through the materio-dynamic agencies 

 of the sympathetic nervature, dovetailing, if not uniting, 

 with those of the systemic nervature. 



In the union of fractured long bones it has been 

 observed that when the systemic nervature has suffered 

 irreparable injury, it does not take place with the char- 

 acteristic rapidity and completeness of unaffected innerva- 

 tion, and in some cases that it has not taken place at all. 

 This observation is at first sight puzzling, but when we 

 consider the physiology of the process of ossification in the 



