466 SPRAINS, OR STRAINS. 



tually stopped. This is a far better, and a far more 

 effectual plan than any of the old measures once fashionable, 

 but now, we trust, on account of their barbarity, discarded. 

 Treated after the above method, should the first trial not 

 succeed, a second can be made ; and even this plan be 

 repeated an indefinite number of times, without inflicting 

 suffering amounting to positive torture. 



CHAPTER, XIV. 



SPRAINS, OR STRAINS. 



Unless we were allowed to destroy a vast number of horses 

 with sprains in every stage, we could never define this in- 

 jury so accurately as to defy criticism. It is said to be not 

 an unnatural distention of parts, but a rupture or division 

 of the cellular membrane which connects these parts : it is 

 at the same time held by some that the injury which tears 

 through this, does not put these tendinous and ligamentous 

 parts on the stretch, because we are told that they are not 

 capable of either distention or contractility. Wood, iron, 

 stone, and even glass, are capable of contraction and disten- 

 tion, yet ligament and tendon are incapable of it ; so we 

 are told at least. But, with great submission, we do firmly 

 believe that these organs can and do suffer extension ; and 

 that, during the violence committed in putting their struc- 

 ture on the stretch, both the internal cellular tissue, and 

 that which connects them with other parts, is ruptured ; 

 and, with it, an infinity of minute vascular, nervous and 

 absorbent vessels are likewise torn asunder ; whence we are 

 at no loss to account for the distention which follows this 

 kind of injury ; the pain and exquisite tenderness conse- 

 quent upon the lesion ; nor the difficulty of promoting 

 immediate absorption, when the absorbents have suffered 

 in common with the other parts. Such we believe to be the 

 rationale of ordinary sprains or strains ; but there are ex- 

 traordinary, or rather more severe effects which follow 

 sudden exertions ; as violent efforts of the muscles to re- 

 store the equilibrium endangered by a slip. Here it is 

 supposed that the tendinous structure itself, thecas, and all 

 surrounding parts, may be unnaturally distended, and their 

 minute connexions broken through. 



