SPRAIN OF THE FLKXOR TENDONS. 351 



notion that the animal has " broken his leg." He is denounced as 

 " broke down," and ruined, and fit for nothing but to be shot! All 

 this has led to a good deal of misconception concerning 



The Nature of " Broke Down." That distinguished sur- 

 geon, the late Mr. Listen, writing in his " Elements of Surgery" 

 on the subject of RUPTURE OF TENDON — which does now and 

 then happen in human practice — says, " such injury often happens 

 to horses in what is called ' breaking down.' In them the tendon 

 is occasionally snapped actually through, and the ends widely 

 separated." Veterinary surger}^ however, fails to confirm this. 

 Coleman viewed " broke down" as sprain or rupture of the sus- 

 pensory ligament. Blaine says the same thing, admitting rupture 

 of the flexor tendons to be " very rare " Spooner, in his edition 

 of White, says, "This accident (breaking down) is supposed to 

 depend upon a rupture of the great suspensory ligament of the 

 leg ; though sometimes it is occasioned by a rupture of the liga- 

 ments of the pastern." And, further on — " I have met with two 

 cases of rupture of the ligaments by which the two pastern bones 

 are held together. It happened to two nerved horses. Both came 

 down upon the fetlock joints ; and were on that account shot." 

 And nothing short of actually '* coming down (to the ground) upon 

 the fetlock joints" ought, in my opinion, to be allowed to constitute 

 break down. However severe the sprain, and however lame and 

 helpless the horse in consequence of it, still, no hreak down can 

 or ought to be pronounced to exist in the absence of complete rup- 

 ture ; an accident of which we appear to have no instances on 

 record as respects flexor tendon, and but few as respect liga- 

 ments. Nor are we to feel surprise at this, seeing that the tendon 

 oftenest broken in man (the gastrocnemius) has, in comparison to 

 size of animal, so much larger and more powerful muscles attached 

 to it than have the perforans and perforatus tendons in the horse. 



The Effects of a Ruptured Tendon or Ligament are at 

 onc6 shewn by the following experiment — one that was made some 

 years ago by myself on a young ass about to be sacrificed for the 

 purpose of dissection. By means of a bistoury introduced into the 

 leg between the flexor tendons and suspensory ligament, both the 

 tendons were divided, first in one leg, then in the other. The heels 



