FRACTURES. 



405 



uneasiness, other ropes may be attached to the corners of the sail-cloth. This 

 will afford considerable relief to the patient, as well as add to the security of 

 the bandages. 





In many cases the fracture, although a simple one, may be visible on the 

 slightest inspection ; in others, there may be merely a suspicion of its existence. 

 Here will be exhibited the skill and the humanity of the educated surgeon, or 

 the recklessness and brutality of the empiric. The former will carefully place 

 his patient in the position at once the least painful to the sufferer, and the most 

 commodious for himself. He will proceed with gentleness, patience, and ma- 

 nagement no rough handling or motion of the parts, inflicting torture on the 

 animal, and adding to the injury already received. It is interesting to observe 

 how soon the horse comprehends all this, and submits to the necessary inspec- 

 tion ; and how complete and satisfactory the examination terminates under the 

 superintendence of the humane and cautious practitioner, while the brute in 

 human shape fails in comprehending the real state of the case. 



Heat, swelling, tenderness, fearfulness of the slightest motion, crepitus, and 

 especially change of the natural position of the limb, are the most frequent 

 indications of fracture. 



The probability of reunion of the parts depends upon the depth of the wound 

 connected with the fracture the contusion of the soft parts in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of it the blood-vessels, arterial or venous, that have been 

 wounded the propinquity of some large joint to which the inflammation may 

 be communicated dislocation of the extremities of the fractured joint injuries 

 of the periosteum the existence of sinuses, caries, or necrosis, or the frac- 

 ture being compound, or broken into numerous spiculae or splinters. 



In a horse that is full of flesh, the cure of fracture is difficult ; likewise in an 

 old or worn-out horse or when the part is inaccessible to the hand or to instru- 

 ments or when separation has taken place between the parts that were begin- 

 ning to unite or where the surrounding tissues have been or are losing their 



