96 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



This opinion is assuredly erroneous. Dislocation may be 

 regarded as an impossibility, unless the tendons which bind 

 the joint together have been first either cut or torn apart. 

 "Were such displacement of the patella to occur, it is little 

 likely that the animal would ever step upon that leg again. 

 The writer has examined and treated a large number of 

 horses said to be stifled, but in no single instance was he able 

 to discover satisfactory evidence of dislocation. Swelling, at 

 the stifle-joint is exceedingly conspicuous; and from this cir- 

 cumstance, together with the slow progress of the patient's 

 recovery, the uninformed are deceived into the belief that 

 there must have been some displacement. 



TREATMENT. 



Counter-irritation is the only treatment which can be of 

 the least benefit. To secure this, let the parts be well rubbed 

 with the corrosive liniment, until it has been applied three 

 or four times each alternate day. Rest and the reparative 

 energies of nature will do the remainder. It may be months^ 

 perhaps, before the horse can be worked again ; but on this 

 point, as in all similar cases, the owner must be patient. 



Perhaps the joint never becomes as strong as it was before 

 sustaining the injury. There is an equal doubt whether the 

 animal is not more liable than formerly to the same disable- 

 ment. Good grounds for hope do certainly exist, however ; 

 for not a few so-called "stifled" horses have been restored 

 to unimpaired and permanent soundness. 



, SPLINT. 



This is a bony enlargement upon the inner splint-bone, 

 whence its name. In its origin, symptoms, and development 

 it is nearly identical with bone spavin, from which it difiTers 

 in no marked respect, except as regards location. This 

 comes upon the side of the bone ; the other, at its head. It 

 is, however, a much less formidable disorder than spavin. 

 The enlargement seldom attains any great dimensions, and, 

 in a large majority of cases, none of the important ligaments 



m 



