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other Infusoria, when desiccated, will live when they are put into 

 water. It is also perfectly known that seeds, after many centu- 

 ries, may grow when put in the earth. I have found something 

 of the same kind in higher organisms ; it is that muscles, in a 

 certain condition, after having been separated from the body 

 for many days, may recover their irritability. 



Dr. Coze, of Strasbourg, has found that chloroform injected 

 into the main artery of a limb produces instantly the strongest 

 rigidity, and that if blood is allowed to circulate again in the 

 limb, life appears again in it. I have gone farther, and found 

 that if a limb, in which an injection of chloroform has been made, 

 is separated from the body, it is able, under the influence of an 

 injection of blood, to recover its muscular irritability 2, 3, 4, 5 

 and (in one case) 10 days after the rigidity was produced. 

 1 think Mr. Edouard Robin is right in admitting that chloroform 

 prevents the chemical changes that take place in organic bodies 

 after death, and, if it is so, we can understand why an injection 

 of blood made so long after the limb has been separated from the 

 body, may reproduce irritability. One day is not more than one 

 hour, if, during it, there is no alteration produced in the muscles. 



It appears, nevertheless, that chloroform does not entirely 

 prevent the alterations of muscles, because, in my experiments, I 

 have found that the longer the limbs had been separated from 

 the body, the greater was the quantity of blood necessary to re- 

 produce irritability. 



7th. I lately made an experiment, with the view of ascertain- 

 ing how long a limb, separated from the body of an animal, may 

 be kept alive by means of injected blood. I succeeded in 

 retaining local life in one of the limbs of a rabbit more than 

 41 hours. The animal was a very vigorous, full grown one. I 

 killed it by hemorrhage, and, two hours afterwards, rigidity had 

 begun in most of the muscles of the two posterior limbs, and only 

 a few bundles of muscular fibres had still a slight irritability. A 

 first injection of defibrinated blood was then pushed in the femo- 

 ral artery of the right posterior limb. Fifteen minutes after the 

 beginning of the injection, local life fi. e. irritability) was re- 

 stored in the limb receiving blood, and cadaveric rigidity had 

 disappeared. 



The manner of testing this irritability was the same as that of 



