When any portion of body tissue has been destroyed by disease or violence, the adjacent tissues at once set to work to repair the gap. Clearly their task will depend on the extent of the gap and the presence of any factors which hinder normal tissue activity. When a clean surgical incision has been made and the edges sewn closely together the gap to be bridged is very thin. On the other hand, if there has been an abscess and a large area of tissue has been dissolved away, the problem is very much greater. There are many factors which infuence the rate of the body's power of healing. Where a gap has been left in the tissues, the 'raw' surfaces are covered with blood clot and any intervening cavity may in fact be filled with blood. From the ends of the capillaries which have been cut on either side, cells grow rapidly into this haematoma (a collecion of blood in the tissues) and form granulation tissue, which is thus a mass of tiny little capillary buds with fibrous tissue cells.
As the days go by, the very rich blood supply enables fibrous tissue to grow rapidly and become more dense, and finally to cement the gap. Weeks later the blood vessels die off and firm fibrous tissue (scartissue) remains. This becomes slowly tighter and tighter. This process we know as contraction, so that what may appear to be quite a large scar shrinks down over a period of months to become sometimes invisible. Perhaps the best example of this is the cavity left by the removal of the slough from a large carbuncle; in a very few months there is a small white, irregular scar marking the centre of the great cavity where the carbuncle existed. If the wound has involved other tissues than connective tissue - for instance, the mucousmembrane of the cheek, or the skin - then the very specialised epithelial lining also grows across as a sheet of cells and covers up the granulation tissue. The same process occurs in the intestinal tract; when an anastomosis (artificial opening between two hollow organs or vessels) has been performed, the cut edges of the mucousmembrane are stuck together temporarily by fibrin, and over a period of days the cells lining the stomach or intestine grow rapidly across the gap. When a bone is broken, repair takes place in a similar way: calcium substances from the blood are deposited in the granulation tissue forming callus. Into this callus the specialised cells which form true bone, migrate from the surrounding damaged bone: over a period of weeks or even months the minute structure is rebuilt to join up exactly with the bone on either side of the break.
The healing power of the body is influenced by many factors. An adequate supply of oxygen is necessary for these tissue repairs, and as oxygen is carried to the tissues by the blood, anaemia results in a very poor healing rate. Vitamins, especially vitamin C, are necessary for the repair of tissues, so that patients whose reserve of vitamin C has been depleted heal more slowly and may in fact not heal at all. Patients who are ill use more vitamin C than the normal healthy individuals and sometimes, unless their requirement is met, a wound may come apart even a week or more after operation, showing no sign of healing whatever. Infection always delays healing as it interferes with the activities of the cells at the edges of the wound. Similarly, if the patient' s general health has been impaired by longstanding disease or bad nourishment his powers of healing are poor, as the substances required for the repair are in short supply. The presence of foreign bodies or a poor blood supply (such as occurs in arteriosclerosis, or if the stitches have been tied too tight) will also delay sound healing. In addition, there are many personal and undetermined factors which must be responsible for the fact that some people heal quickly and others heal very poorly. Age is important; babies and children repair their tissues very much more rapidly than old people. This is because the growing child has much more vitality in all his cells. For example, a fracture of the humerus in a new-born baby may be soundly united in ten days; in an adult the same fracture requires about eight weeks to heal. Research Tissue Repair and Replacement
Carbuncle is a beautiful gem of a deep red colour (with a mixture of scarlet) . It was called by the Greeks anthrax and is found in the East Indies. When held up to the sun, it loses its deep tinge, and becomes of the colour of burning coal. The name belongs for the most part to rubysapphire, though it has been also given to red spinel and garnet. Research Carbuncle
Garnet is a widely distributed group with several minerals. They are found in both metamorphic and igneous rocks. The chief use of red transparent garnets are as an inexpensive gem stone, however, much is used as an abrasive material. They have the formulae A3B2(SiO4)3 and a relative hardness of 8. The commonest colour of garnet is red and the lustre is vitreous. The dodecahedron and trapezohedron are the common forms. There are also white, green, yellow, brown, and black varieties. The garnet is a silicate, the bases being aluminalime (grossularite, essonite, or cinnamon stone), or alumina magnesia (pyrope), or alumina iron (almandine), or aluminamanganese (spessarite), or iron lime (common garnet, melanite, allochroite), or chromiumlime (ouvarovite, the colour emerald green). The garnet was, in part, the carbuncle of the ancients. Garnet is a very common mineral in gneiss and micaslate. Research Garnet
Carbuncle is a dangerous memory residentcompanion virus. It is a COM file 622 bytes long. On execution it checks the system time, and depending on the current seconds value it either jumps to an infection routine or calls the triggerfunction.
In the infection routine the virus creates the file CARBUNCL.COM with the READONLY and HIDDEN attributes set and writes itself (622 bytes) into that file. If this file is present, the virus overwrites it if this file is not a READONLY one. If this file is READONLY, the virus tries to create and overwrite it but fails because it doesn't check/clear the file attributes. Then the virus searches for EXE files by using DOS functions FindFirst/FindNext and the mask '*.exe' and infect them. On infection the virus renames the EXE file to CRP and creates a batch companion file with the name of the infected program and a . BATextension.
As the result, after infection of one EXE file there are two files with the same name and CRP and BAT extensions. Of course, CARBUNCL.COM is in the same directory also. The companion batch file contains six lines of DOS commands. If the file FILENAME.EXE was infected, the companion FILENAME.BAT contains these lines: @ECHO OFF CARBUNCL RENAME FILENAME.CRP FILENAME.EXE FILENAME. EXE RENAME FILENAME.EXE FILENAME.CRP CARBUNCL
If the user tries to execute the EXE program, DOS will execute the companionBAT file virus. On the first line of this BAT file the virus disables DOSecho for more invisibility. The instruction of the second line calls the main virus body from CARBUNCL.COM file, the virus searches for non-infected files and attacks them. The lines from the third to the fifth force DOS to execute the infected EXE that is hidden by a CRPextension. This file is renamed to an EXE extension, then it is executed as an EXE and then it is renamed back to CRP. And as the last action the BAT file executes the COM virus again. If the current seconds value of system times is lesser or equals than 16, the virus calls trigger subroutine. This code searches for the first five CRP files and overwrites them by the virus body. As the result these files are not recoverable and should be deleted. In another case they will spread the virus on execution. The virus contains the internal text strings which are in use on searching for not infected files and on creating BATcompanion: *.crp CARBUNCL. COM BAT*.exe CRP @ECHO OFF CARBUNCL RENAME It also contains the 'copyright' string: PC CARBUNCLE: Crypt Newsletter 14 Research Carbuncle
In heraldry a carbuncle is a charge or bearing representing the precious stone. It has eight sceptres or staves radiating from a common centre. Research Carbuncle
Abbreviations
Research Tissue Repair and Replacement
