16 



My opinion is well proved by the following experiments : 



1st. I have put, three or four times a day and for many days, 

 a certain quantity of urine on the posterior part of the neck, in 

 the neighborhood of the scapulae, upon guinea-pigs. Before a 

 week elapsed, the skin, at the place acted on by the urine, had 

 lost its hair and epidermis. After a week more there was an 

 ulceration in the skin, and ten or twelve days later the skin was 

 destroyed, and there was an ulcer with a very bad aspect. This 

 fact proves how powerful is the action of urine on the skin. 



2d. On guinea-pigs, upon which the spinal cord was cut in the 

 dorsal region, and on pigeons, upon which the spinal cord was 

 destroyed from the fifth costal vertebra to its termination, I have 

 found that no ulceration appeared when I took care to prevent 

 any part of their bodies from being in a continued state of com- 

 pression, and of washing them many times a day to remove 

 the urine and faeces. 



3d. In cases where an ulceration had been produced, I have 

 succeeded in curing it by washing and preventing compression. 



4th. I have found that in animals having the spinal cord cut 

 across, every kind of wounds or burns were cured as quickly as 

 in healthy animals. 



Therefore the ulcerations which appear, in cases of paraplegia, 

 do not exist -directly in consequence of the palsy ; they can be 

 avoided and in many cases they can be cured. 



These conclusions are perfectly true in animals having had 

 an injury to the spinal cord for a shorter time than a year ; 

 but on guinea-pigs, upon which a lateral half of the spinal cord, 

 had been cut for fourteen, fifteen, or eighteen months, near 

 the tenth or eleventh costal vertebra, I have found an alteration 

 of nutrition in the palsied parts. It was the right half of the 

 spinal cord which had been cut, and in such a case, as I have 

 discovered, the left side of the body behind the wounded part 

 evidently loses a portion of its sensibility, and its temperature is 

 also diminished. I have found, at the time designated, an ulcera- 

 tion coming in the part between the sacrum and the hip-joint. 

 That ulceration has taken a tolerably great extension in surface 

 but not in depth. It became as large as a half dollar. 

 The part ulcerated has never been subjected to any kind of 

 compression, neither to the action of urine and faeces. 



