Such injuries of the artery as are inflicted by sharp-pointed instruments, even where it is only opened at the side, and shot-wounds which merely remove a small portion of the wall of an artery, are, as is well-known, extremely dangerous; for they usually give rise to the so-called false aneurism, and, under certain conditions, to varicose aneurism, which we shall soon consider in detail. It is true that penetrating and incised wounds of an artery may heal under favorable conditions, as we see in cases where the temporal artery has been opened, and, as Amusat has recently shown, by observations at the bedside and by experiments on animals, in the same manner as similarly injured veins. But as in man, injuries are often inflicted on the arteries under circumstances which exclude the concurrence of these favorable conditions, such wounds do not commonly heal; in gunshot-wounds of the artery more especially, a cure is never effected by the adhesion of the margin of the wound, but, as an ordinary consequence, we generally have the so-called false aneurism.