434 GENERAL ANATOMY. 



muscles, divided crosswise, in amputation for example, are 

 covered over again by the flaps of skin; only the agglutinating 

 matter is from the commencement very closely attached to 

 the truncated extremity of the muscles. When muscles are 

 cut crosswise, and not covered by flaps of skin, there soon 

 forms at their extremity suppurating granulations, and after- 

 wards a cicatrice; these phenomena, and particularly the last, 

 are more tardy when the muscles are only laterally denuded. 

 In all these cases, at whatever period an inflamed wound is 

 examined, whether the inflammation be adhesive or suppura- 

 tive, the cellular sheaths of the muscles and of their bundles 

 only are changed; no change whatever is perceptible in the 

 muscular fibres themselves. It is proper to observe, however, 

 that in this case the fibres are deprived of the greater part of 

 their irritability. 



697. When a muscle is cut across, a considerable separa- 

 tion takes place between the edges of the division, and always 

 greater than the wound sustained by the skin. When the 

 edges of the external wound have been brought together, and 

 have united, the ends of the muscle remain separated, at first 

 filled with an organizable liquid, which afterwards becomes 

 vascular, soft, which contracts a little and slightly diminishes 

 the distance which existed between the ends of the muscles, 

 and at last becomes more or less firm and resisting. This in- 

 termediate substance, when its organization is completed, has 

 sometimes the appearance of cellular tissue, frequently that of 

 ligamentous tissue, and sometimes that of sub-cartilaginous 

 coriaceous tissue, but never that of muscular tissue. At some 

 period of the formation we are now examining, it is always 

 found that the muscular fibres and fasciculi are foreign to it, 

 and that it is only the reunion of the cellular tissue which 

 forms sheaths to them. A muscle which is reunited in this 

 manner, presents a kind of aponeurotic tendinous intersec- 

 tion; it is a kind of digastric muscle, the two bellies of 

 which are living and irritable, whilst the intermediate sub- 

 stance fulfils the functions of a tendon which more or less 

 resists or gives way to distention. This intermediate sub- 

 stance is not irritable either by mechanical stimulants or gal- 



