Into the wedge-shaped, elastic clot which now fills the wound from
bottom to top like jelly in a mould, the leucocytes or white blood-cells
promptly migrate and convert it into a mesh of living cells. They are
merely the cavalry and skirmishers of the repair brigade and are
quickly followed by the heavy infantry of the line in the shape of cells
born of the injured tissues on either side of the wound. These join
hands across the gap, the engineer corps and the commissariat department
move up promptly to their support in the form of little
vein-construction switches, which bud out from the wounded
blood-vessels. The clot is transformed into what we term granulation
tissue and begins to organize. A few days later this granulation tissue
begins to contract and pull the lips of the wound together. If the gap
has not been too wide the wound will be completely closed, its lips and
deeper parts drawn together in nearly perfect line, separated only by a
thin scar on the surface with a vertical keel of scar tissue descending
from it. If the lips cannot be drawn together and there be no surgical
skill at hand to assist them with stitches or bandages, then the gap
will be filled up by the fibrous transformation of this granulation
tissue and a thick, heavy scar result. Meanwhile, the skin-cells of the
surface have not been idle, but are budding out on either side of the
healing wound, pushing a little line of colonists forward across the raw
surface. In longer or shorter time, according to the width of the gap,
these two lines meet, and the site of our wound or the scar that it has
left is perfectly coated over with a layer of healthy skin. This drama
has occurred so many score of times in every one of us that custom has
blinded our eyes to its ingenious perfection, but it took a million
years to bring it to its present finish.
It may be a healthy corrective to our overweening conceit to remind
ourselves that, remarkable and valuable as it is, it is a mere infant
in arms compared to the superb powers of replacement and repair
possessed by our more remote ancestors. Most invertebrates and many of
the lowest two classes of backboned animals, the fishes and the
amphibians, cannot merely stop up a rent, but renew an entire limb,
fin,--yes, even eye or head. Cut an earthworm in two and the rear half
will grow a new head and the front half a new tail. It may even be cut
in four or five segments, each of which will proceed to form a head at
one end and a tail at the other. The lobster can regrow a complete gill
and any number of claws or an eye. A salamander will reproduce a foot
and part of a limb. Take out the crystalline lens in the eye of a
salamander and the edge of the iris, or colored part of the eye, will
grow another lens. Take out both the lens and the iris and the choroid
coat of the eye will reproduce both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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