The Organization of the Egg 197 



labor. A post-mortem examination sliowed the p^rafted vessel 

 to be slightly dilated and lacking muscular tissue, but other- 

 wise normal. Carrel's success in grafting vessels enabled him 

 to transplant entire organs. He performed this operation on 

 cats' kidneys, with a certain amount of temporary success, 

 the transplanted organ functioning for a number of weeks. 

 Ultimately however the animals died. But even the tem- 

 porary success of so daring an operation gives ground for 

 hope that complete success may ultimately be possible. 



Grafting on the human body or plastic surgery is supposed 

 to have been practised by the Egyptians as early as 1,500 

 B. C. In recent years great advances have been made in this 

 branch of surgery, and not only have skin, bones, muscles, 

 fascia and tendons been transplanted, but parts of internal 

 organs have been used to repair defects in other parts. Thus 

 the urethra has been replaced by the appendix and a vagina 

 has been made from a piece of intestine. A piece of cornea 

 from a human eye kept in cold storage for eight days has 

 been successfully used to partially restore the sight of a man 

 blinded by alkali. 



The story of the recent achievements of surgery in repair- 

 ing the features of soldiers, who had been so badly wounded 

 as to be merely caricatures of their former selves, reads almost 

 like a tale from the "Arabian Nights." Jaws, noses, ears, 

 cheeks, almost entire faces have been remade, so that the vic- 

 tims have in the end presented a fairly good facsimile of their 

 former selves. While details cannot be given here, a brief 

 outline of the method may be of interest. A former picture 

 of the patient if available is taken as the model of what the 

 surgeon aims to make. Then a piece of bone of the proper 

 size and shape to refit the lost part (a jaw or nose) will be 

 cut out of a rib or shin bone and inserted beneath the skin 

 of an adjoining part (the neck or forehead). After the skin 

 has attached itself to the inserted bone, the latter is cut out 

 on three sides, leaving a stalk on one side to maintain the 

 circulation, the skin is now cut open around the scar and 

 the new member inserted in the open cavity. The adjoining 

 skin is attached to the insert, and after the graft has "taken," 

 its stalk is cut away, and when finally healed the skin is 

 massaged, and the scar removed in this way as far as possible. 

 Thus a fairly natural part may be made to replace a jawless 

 mouth or a repulsive hole where a nose once grew. 



Carrel and others have shown that not only blood vessels 

 and cornea, but also skin, fascia, tendon, bone and cartilage 

 may be preserved in a condition of latent life for weeks or 

 months in cold storage, and still be used successfully for 

 transplantation. Thus pieces of skin taken from the body 



