OSSIFIC DISEASE OF JOINTS. 53 



bone, and the circumstance led me to make the remark, that it 

 was possible there existed some fracture. At this the owner 

 smiled in evident disbelief; for, although lame, the horse used the 

 leg too well to admit for a moment the idea of his limb being 

 " broken." From this time, however, I had him confined to his 

 stable ; and though under treatment, both constitutional and local, 

 which commonly succeeds in cases of the kind, he daily grew 

 worse. The arm took to swelling very much, and the discharge, 

 which was at first purulent, became, on the third day after his con- 

 finement — the fourteenth from the attack — of a synovial character, 

 shewing that the shoulder joint had become opened, although a 

 silver probe introduced could not be made to enter it, but appeared 

 to abut against the outer condyle of the humerus. Every means 

 the case would admit of, without risk of further injury, was em- 

 ployed to detect fracture, and every now and then crepitus was 

 distinctly heard ; and yet, that no main shaft of bone was broken 

 was evident, from the fact of the animal being able (when made 

 to do so) to stand and bear his weight upon the limb, and to 

 walk upon it. Indeed, on one occasion, when thrown down by 

 the accident of the slings giving way — into which he had been put 

 at the urgent desire of his owner — he actually raised himself up 

 upon his lame limb. Every thing failing to afford relief, and his 

 local malady having by this time, in addition to the enormous 

 tumefaction of limb it had caused, aroused alarming constitutional 

 irritation, it was deemed imperative, for humanity's sake, to put 

 an end to the poor creature's sufferings. On the 7th December 

 — the forty-third from the day he received the injury — he 

 was shot. 



Examination of his limb shewed a fracture of the external 

 condyle of the humerus ; and splinters of bone, broken off its side, 

 were found, in fragments, lodged in the soft parts surrounding the 

 condyle. A sinus was discovered leading from the wound into the 

 cavity of the joint, which the probe had failed to find out. There 

 had been for some days before death a diminution in the quantity 

 of the discharges, owing to their having, through gravitation, bur- 

 rowed underneath the faschia, among the muscles of the arm. 

 The synovial lining of the joint presented spotty blushes of red 



