76 INFLAMMATION. 



The only plan we can pursue, supposing the glue to fail, 

 is to make use of sutures — to sew the parts together with 

 needle and thread ; but sutures are annoying agents, very 

 apt to create irritation, and bring on suppuration, or to 

 slough from their hold ; so, after our attempts to produce 

 adhesion, we are foiled, and are reluctantly compelled to 

 suflfer the wound to heal by granulation. Not but what we 

 every now and then see instances of union by the first inten- 

 tion; they are, however, I repeat, but comparatively rare. 

 The result of the common operation of bleeding shows the 

 tendency of the horse's skin to unite is vigorous. How 

 would the arms of men fare were they served as horse's 

 necks are after bleeding ? Would they not, almost one and 

 all, inflame and form abscesses ? When surgeons are com- 

 pelled to use sutures — for they never have recourse to them 

 but through compulsion — they naturally look for suppura- 

 tion instead of immediate adhesion. We have, however, 

 one advantage in some measure counterbalancing our incon- 

 veniences ; which is, that the granulating process in. horses is 

 carried on with a rapidity hardly known in human surgery. 



Reproduction of Structure. — Whenever parts are de- 

 stroyed, coagulable lymph is still the material by which the 

 chasm is filled up ; we now have to inquire what changes 

 the lymph undergoes, or in what cases, and to what extent 

 it undergoes conversion into the structures whose place it 

 supplies. In cases where there has been little loss of sub- 

 stance, the coagulable lymph is, after a time, absorbed, the 

 parts being brought together by contraction after the union 

 is completed. We observe this exemplified in the instance 

 of the skin. When there has been simple division, the 

 edges of the wound gradually contract, and ultimately unite 

 so as to require no new skin; if the injury has been exten- 

 sive, and much new material is wanted, the old skin spreads 

 itself out so as to leave the smallest interval possible to be 

 renewed. This niggardness on the part of the formative 

 agents evinces that the creation of new formations is an ex- 

 pensive process. Some structures are said to be reproducible 

 after being partially lost or destroyed ; the generality, how- 



