stump, growing from the back toward
the palmer aspect of the stump digit, as if to cover and protect the
stump. Blandin has observed a case of the same description. A third
occurred at the Hopital de la Charite, in a woman, who, in consequence
of a whitlow, had lost the whole of the 3d phalanx of one of the
forefingers. The soft and fleshy cushion which here covered the 2d
phalanx was terminated by a small, blackish nail, like a grain of spur
rye. It is probable that in these cases the soft parts of the 3d
phalanx, and especially the ungual matrix, had not been wholly
destroyed. In his lectures Chevalier speaks of analogous cases.

In some instances avulsion of a finger is effected in a peculiar
manner. In 1886 Anche reported to his confreres in Bordeaux a rare
accident of this nature that occurred to a carpenter. The man's finger
was caught between a rope and the block of a pulley. By a sudden and
violent movement on his part he disengaged the hand but left the 3d
finger attached to the pulley. At first examination the wound looked
like that of an ordinary amputation by the usual oval incision; from
the center of the wound the proximal fragment of the 1st phalanx
projected. Polaillon has collected 42 similar instances, in none of
which, however, was the severance complete.

It occasionally happens that in avulsion of the finger an entire tendon
is stripped up and torn off with the detached member. Vogel describes
an instance of this nature, in which the long flexor of the thumb was
torn off with that digit. In the Surgical Museum at Edinburgh there is
preserved a thumb and part of the flexor longus pollicis attached,
which were avulsed simultaneously. Nunnely has seen the little finger
together with the tendon and body of the longer flexor muscle avulsed
by machinery. Stone details the description of the case of a boy named
Lowry, whose left thumb was caught between rapidly twisting strands of
a rope, and the last phalanx, the neighboring soft parts, and also the
entire tendon of the flexor longus pollicis were instantly torn away.
There was included even the tendinous portion of that small slip of
muscle taking its origin from the anterior aspect of the head and upper
portion of the ulna, and which is so delicate and insignificant as to
be generally overlooked by anatomists. There was great pain along the
course of the tract of abstraction of the tendon.

Pinkerton describes a carter of thirty-one who was bitten