Page:A Treatise on the Membranes in General, and on Different Membranes in Particular.djvu/156

152 MORBID MEMBRANES. Hence the paleness and flaccidity of these productions, when these different conditions become weak or cease.

247. This is the second period of the formation of cicatrices, in which the developement of the fleshy granulations presents the following phenomena: small reddish bodies rise here and there in form of unequal and irregularly disposed tubercles. At first more or less distant, they approximate and unite; adhesions take place between them; in this manner a thin membrane is soon formed on their superficies, every where continued of an equal extent with the wound, covering exactly, and without interruption, the parts beneath, and forming for them a new tegument.

248. This tegument is not yet the cicatrix which in the end must be infinitely more contracted; this is, as it were, a provisional epidermis, destined to guard the part during the operation which prepares and forms this cicatrix.

It differs only, from the common membranes, which are smooth and every where uniform, in as much as the granulations here produce an unequal and rough surface. This unevenness of the granulations, and their apparent separation, seem at first to oppose this manner of conceiving the first state of cicatrices, but the following experiment leaves no doubt on the subject.

Make a large wound on an animal; let it run through its two first periods; then kill the animal, and remove the portion of flesh on which the granulations are formed; distend it by a rounded body applied to