Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/164

 mind to recall some one who bore a recent wound. "Perhaps it was not a bad wound, but it was a wound, nevertheless, and some one must have seen it, must know about it. It is not three days." Kennedy shook his head. It was a point that had bothered him a great deal.

"As to the wounds," he added in a measured tone, "although this occurred scarcely three days ago, there is no person even remotely suspected of the crime who can be said to bear on his hands or face others than old scars of wounds."

He paused. Then he shot out in quick staccato, "Did you ever hear of Dr. Carrel's most recent discovery of accelerating the healing of wounds so that those which under ordinary circumstances might take ten days to heal might be healed in twenty-four hours?"

Rapidly, now, he sketched the theory. "If the factors that bring about the multiplication of cells and the growth of tissues were discovered, Dr. Carrel said to himself, it would perhaps become possible to hasten artificially the process of repair of the body. Aseptic wounds could probably be made to cicatrise more rapidly. If the rate of reparation of tissue were hastened only ten times, a skin wound would heal in less than twenty-four hours and a fracture of the leg in four or five days.

"For five years Dr. Carrel has been studying the subject, applying various extracts to wounded tissues. All of them increased the growth of connective tissue. but the degree of acceleration varied greatly. In