Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/176

 Does Nature make no effort to play the part of the spear of Achilles and 'heal the wounds which she herself has made'? Only to a negligible extent, on account of the vicious circle just alluded to. So we have the curious phenomenon that in the skin and round the broken ends of a fractured bone (for what is called callus is really only fibrous tissue with special bony elements superimposed) fibrous tissue is very slowly but more or less steadily absorbed; while in the places where such absorption would be of the utmost value to the individual it hardly takes place at all.

Now, the reader will observe that this fibrous tissue is, in the first instance, laid down by the activity of leucocytes acting, to some extent at any rate, in obedience to impulses from the circulatory centres of the medulla, to which Mr. Dearmer quite rightly attaches considerable importance. They make up, in fact, his 'undermind.' I can only say that, so far as any pathological evidence which we possess justifies us in coming to a definite conclusion, we can but suppose that a stimulation of these lower centres to greater activity, by excitation through suggestion of the higher ones, would lead to a further deposition of fibrous tissue, to the great detriment of the general condition of the patient. Any attempt