626 THE DISEASES AND DISORDERS OF THE OX. 



ill-advised course damage and loss must necessarily accrue to 

 the farmer and to the landowner. When suffering from this 

 malady, the ox staggers, cannot rise from a recumbent posture, 

 or can do so only with the utmost difficulty ; the bones swell, 

 especially near and at the joints, and the animal becomes 

 paralysed. A mild laxative, a full and nourishing diet, mineral 

 tonics, and phosphate of calcium may be tried. 



If an animal that has died when afflicted with this disorder 

 be examined after death, ligaments may be seen torn away from 

 their places of attachment, while the bones are seen to be enlarged, 

 friable, broken, and with bony outgrowths upon them. 



Rickets is a disease in which the nutrition of the body 

 generally is perverted, one result of the disordered condition 

 being irregularity of ossification, with resulting softness of the 

 bones. This disorder often occurs in calves of about a few weeks 

 old, and it is shown by enlargement of joints and a bending 

 of the limbs, especially below the knee and the hock, as the case 

 may be. As a rule the malady is accompanied by indigestion 

 and diarrhoea, and it may be due to an imperfect supply of 

 milk. The patient must be nursed carefully, and must be 

 supplied with nutritious and easily digestible food, cod-liver oil, 

 lime-water and tonics, and other medicines given in milk. 

 Those portions of limbs which are bent may be supported 

 artificially and partly straightened by splints. 



FRACTURES. 



When a bone is merely snapped asunder so as to be simply 

 broken into two or more pieces, the fracture is spoken of as 

 simple; when the bone is shattered and separate fragments are 

 produced, the fracture is said to be comminuted ; when the 

 skin also is torn and the bone projects through the orifice 

 produced and makes its appearance externally, the fracture is 

 called compound. In fact, when all the structures super- 

 ficial to the bone, skin included, are rent, the fracture is spoken 

 of as being compound. When the bone is broken into two 

 pieces, the fracture is called single. 



A fracture of a leg-bone gives rise to a sudden and intense 

 lameness, and usually to a loss of power to move that part of the 

 limb which is below the injury, while near the fracture itself the 

 limb mav swell and become hot. If we take hold of the limb 



