511 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals, 
ON THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF BONE BY 
TRANSPLANTATION OF THE PERIOSTEUM AND BY OSSEOUS 
GRAFTS. 
By M. Ollier. 
The following is a brief abstract of the papers by M. 
Ollier which have recently excited so much attention at the 
Academie des Sciences. 
Notwithstanding that the experiments by Flourens and 
others may be considered to have decided the question of the 
agency of the periosteum, M. Ollier, in order to elucidate 
certain undecided points, determined to institute a new series 
of experiments of a very varied and novel character. All the 
details of these experiments have been laid before the Biological 
Society; and those of them which relate to transplantation 
in the same animal are given at length, with illustrations, in 
Brown-Sequard’s Journal de Thysiologie for January, 1859. 
Here are the results : 
I. The artificial production of lone by means of the transplan¬ 
tation of periosteum. (1.) Transplantation in the same animal . 
—Although the experiments were also performed on other 
animals, the rabbit was especially the one selected. The strip 
of periosteum was generally detached from the tibia, as being 
very accessible ; and wherever this strip was grafted or 
secured, there was bone produced, a. The flap of periosteum 
retains its attachment to the base by one of its extremities, the 
rest of it being lodged within the muscles, under the skin, 
&c.; and consequently it continues to receive some vessels 
from the bone. A strip may be obtained from the tibia, long 
enough to wind round the bone or to twist into a spiral or 
figure-of-eight form, around the deep muscles, a cavity in 
these having been first hollowed out. If the rabbit be young 
and vigorous, immediate union usually takes place, and the 
animal seems scarcely to have suffered from the operation. 
The periosteum contracts adhesions with the tissues, amidst 
which it is placed, and new bone is formed at its under sur¬ 
face, this new 7 bone assuming the form and disposition of the 
periosteal flap. The amount of bone thus formed diminishes 
in quantity, how T ever, with the age of the animal. Thus, in a 
five-year-old rabbit, a mere trace of osseous tissue was found. 
