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jumped threefold. The perfect healing of the test animals compared with
the controls indicated that sutures actually interfered with regeneration
producing unnecessary scars and adhesions.
No one knows for sure how the two cut ends find each other, but
there's certainly some active search going on, for peritonitis sets in too
quickly for the results to be due to chance. The process resembles a
regrowing nerve fiber's search for its severed part, which may be con-
ducted by electrical factors, a chemical recognition system, or both.
Electrical potentials probably play the most important part, for recent
research has found DC potentials at injuries on the peritoneum, and
experimental changes in the peritoneum's normal bioelectric pattern at-
tract the inner membrane enclosing the bowels, causing it to adhere to
the site of the disturbance. Al has recently learned that, if the ends don't
have to look for each other but instead are connected by a piece of Si-
lastic tubing, rats can, like tadpoles, replace up to 3 centimeters of
missing intestine. There's no reason to believe this technique couldn't be
adapted to humans.
Even though we don't know enough yet to electrically stimulate intes-
tinal healing, Al has proposed a preliminary test of regeneration in large
mammals that could spare some patients a lifetime of misery. It's almost
impossible
to surgically rejoin the colon to the anus,
and
when