Assollant, having observed that spleened animals never died of hemmorrhage, and that ligatures applied to the divided splenic vessels constantly caused abscesses in the omentum, and death, adopted a peculiar mode of extirpation, which consisted in exposing the organ by a sufficient incision, cutting across its vessels, removing itself, and, without applying a ligature to any of those vessels, proceeding to return the protruded viscera, and to unite the external wound by some points of suture.