The Rate of Healing of Wounds

During recent years a number of papers by Carrel and others concerning the rate of healing of wounds have been published. Du Noiy has also applied some mathematical treatment to these observations and constructed some graduation formulae. In the application of these formulae, however, I think that the meaning of the figures has been in some measure obscured and that a different treatment reveals some interesting relations. Personally I do not feel inclined to make a special formula for any individual case until those which occur so commonly in nature have been investigated. The formula which seems to apply in all cases in which the data are sufficient is the geometrical progression. A geometrical progression is found to arise in nature in many different ways from the theory of'chance. It might be assumed that at the beginning of the healing of a wound, the impulse to heal is great and the factors on which this impulse to heal depends, decay according to the ordinary monomolecular reaction, but the geometrical progression turns up in so many different ways and for reasons which at present we cannot understand that this is nothing but a tentative suggestion. To say more is going beyond the evidence. To clear the ground, a further point requires mention; namely, that it is not necessary to assume that the process of healing is continuous and not subject to sudden change. Take the recent work of Glenny and Hopkins' on the disappearance of diphtheria antitoxin from the blood of animals into which intravenous injections have been made. In these experiments it is found that the rate of disappearance of the antitoxin is not continuous. During the