SPLINT. 255 



The pathological History of Splint ] How happens it 

 that this useful fibro-cartilage becomes transubstantiated into 

 useless bone ] The immediate or proximate cause we believe 

 to be, increased action, amounting in some instances to inflam- 

 mation, set up in the vessels of the fibro-cartilage ; whereby 

 hypertrophy, or — in such an ossific diathesis as the horse species 

 is known to possess — exostosis, is produced. Any violence or 

 injury to bone, or appendage to bone, it is notorious enough, 

 is in horses especially apt to be followed by exostosis; and if the 

 hurt be to a joint, or in the vicinity of one, by anchylosis, par- 

 tial or complete, as well : so prone is the economy of the horse 

 to what medical men call ossific inflammation. Commonly, we 

 believe, this increased or inflammatory action originates in, and 

 for a time is confined to, the substance of the fibro-cartilage inter- 

 posed between the cannon and splint bones : subsequently, in many 

 instances, the periosteum partakes of the same morbid or hyper- 

 trophic action ; and the consequence is, tumidity and acquired sen- 

 sibility of that membrane, in which condition, should it be put on 

 the stretch by the formation of tumour (splint) underneath it, pain 

 and lameness result. This is precisely the same thing that happens 

 in nodes in the human subject, and it was the theory upon it that led 

 to the division of the stretched periosteum for the easement of pain, 

 whence the application of periosteotomy for the relief of lameness 

 in splint. It is not, however, in every instance that the osseous 

 deposition which commences in the fibro-cartilage extends beyond 

 the limits of that substance, and, when it does not, no tumour oi visible 

 splint of course results. Neither is it, perhaps, in every instance that 

 the periosteum, even where tumour forms, participates in the inflam- 

 matory action; consequently, no pain is produced in it — not being 

 sensible in the natural state — no lameness arises out of its tensity 

 or augmentation of substance. Hence, as is ordinarily the case, 

 splints exist without giving rise to lameness. What commonly, 

 indeed, happens with horses having splints we believe to be this : — 

 That the increased vascular action does not amount to inflamma- 

 tion, but is simply what may be termed super-alimentary or 

 hypertrophic ; and that under such influence the tumour of splint 

 rises so gradually that the periosteal membrane, under the same 

 sort of influence, grows as the tumour grows, and so accommodates 



