378 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO \6QQ. 



of drier applications than before ; sometimes using lint only, and at other times 

 powder of turpentine. About 10 days after the operation I found one of the 

 two ligatures in the tendon hanging loose, which I divided and drew out. 

 And 2 or 3 days after I found the other ligature loose also, which in like 

 manner I removed. The part all this while being kept inflected by the paste- 

 board above-mentioned. 



I was often obliged to apply gentle escharotics to lessen the fungus on the 

 tendon. In less than 30 days after the operation he went abroad very lamely. 

 And not many days after, he told me he had walked round St. James's Park ; 

 and within 8 weeks he walked from Wich-street, Temple-bar, to Greenwich, 

 and returned in a few hours. He has now recovered all the motions of his 

 foot, and shows very little lameness in walking, and is not in the least incom- 

 moded in working at his trade. 



It is a common opinion, that stitching divided tendons is hazardous, if not im- 

 practicable ; although the authority of many eminent writers would have prevailed 

 with me in some measure to have an opinion of the success of such an 

 attempt ; yet the contradictions of others, of no less note, would have left me 

 dubious, had I not some time since seen large blood-vessels in the tendon of 

 a horse's leg ; which at that time convinced me that tendons, as well as bones, 

 and other parts, would unite, though they were quite divided, in case the 

 neighbouring parts remain entire, if their two extremities could be artificially 

 applied to each other, without compressing all or the greater part of their 

 blood-vessels. This distribution of the blood-vessels is expressed in the an- 

 nexed fig. 6, pi. 8, where one trunk, aa, with its branches, aa, to the fibrilla 

 of the tendon, bb, is represented; whether it was a vein or an artery I could 

 not discover in that subject, but in all probability both those vessels have the 

 like disposition in such large tendons. I am inclined to think the like distribu- 

 tion of blood-vessels is not to be found in the tendon, which was divided in 

 this present instance ; but that its blood-vessels pass into it and back again at 

 its internal side, next the muscles of the toes and tarsus ; which ought to be 

 taken notice of by the operator in the like case, and that he does not free it 

 of its fat and membranes next those muscles, lest its communication with tlie 

 blood-vessels be destroyed. 



On the Operation of a Blister in the Cure oj a Fever. By Dr. JVm. Cochburn, 



F.R. S. N°252, p. 1(J1. 

 To give a reasonable conjecture how a blistering plaister, the chief ingre- 

 dient of which is cantharides, may cure a fever, and its most terrible symptom, a 

 delirium, and that in a few hours; the doctor first employed microscopes to view 



