In a recent report1 on the responses of the ocular tissues to injury an analysis was made of the role the various components of connective tissue play in wound repair. These studies, which clearly indicate the importance of the initial events, aroused further interest in the nature of these responses. With suspicion that the normal cell constituents of connective tissue adjacent to an injury play a vital part in repair, the healing of wounds in normal and devitalized corneas was investigated. The purpose of this study is twofold: to evaluate the importance to healing of those cell constituents at the edge of a fresh wound and to describe the time and site of formation of sulfated mucopolysaccharides in a cornea recovering from injury.
Methods
Maumenee's2 method of killing corneal cells by freezing was used because it is believed this technique does not directly degrade the chemical constituents of