ANALYSIS OF CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
505 
The claw in its turn disappeared towards its extremity; 
its destruction was molecular and continuous ; the horny 
tissue became, like the hairs, very brittle, and a slight scratch- 
ing on the surface of a spontaneous fracture, which was always 
at the extremity of the claw, was sufficient to detach it in 
large pieces. The nail gradually disappeared completely,* 
and the ulceration of the skin which ensued was produced 
in a circular manner, and with more or less rapidity. The 
precise periods will be given at another time. 
c. Afterwards the bones of the phalanges became denuded , 
and in a short time nothing was left but the skeleton of the 
paw, which assumed, particularly in the rabbit, the appear- 
ance of a crooked claw. But the bones w r ere not only de- 
nuded, for they became the seat of an ascending ulcerative 
process, which was nothing else than a dry molecular necrosis , 
with partial destruction of the bone tissue. 
d. The vessels of the affected limb participated in this 
morbid condition, which, from its real nature, must be evi- 
dently classed amongst those kinds of alterations called necro- 
biotic. The vessels participated in two ways : In the first 
place, parallel to the skin they submitted to an ascending 
ulceration which w^as the commencement of trifling haemor- 
rhages on the surface of the wound, but which did not 
continue long, and were more especially noted during the 
initial period of the alteration. In the second place, a little 
above the point where the lesion ought to have ceased, and 
where definitive cicatrisation should have begun, the vessels 
when dissected and carefully studied were found to be com- 
pletely obliterated internally, either by coagula more or less 
recent, or by an adhesion of their walls, which would appear 
to testify to previous irritation. In our complete memoir 
we shall give at greater length all the details of these pecu- 
larities, w T hich can only be presented here in outline. 
It may be added, relative to the vessels, that, in the cases 
of nerve section, haemorrhage is readily induced, and therefore 
very serious. The rabbit already referred to, and in which 
a small artery above the hock was cut by mistake when re- 
moving a shred of muscle for examination, would really have 
died of haemorrhage had not the vessel been properly 
ligatured 
It may also be stated that the vascular alterations affect 
the vessels distributed among the muscles, as well as those 
connected with the branches of the cut nerve; these altera- 
# In certain cases, instead of undergoing this process of partial destruc- 
tion, the claw is shed at once, as took place in the rabbit which was shown 
to the Society, and whose sciatic nerve was divided by M. Brown-Sequard. 
