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coming truly ossified, is changed into a sortof fibrocartilaginous pouch 

 or capsular sac, in which a somewhat albuminous secretion, or pseudo- 

 synovia, permits the movement to take place. Most commonly, how- 

 ever, in our animals, the union of the bony fragments is obtained wholly 

 through the medium of a layer of fibrous tissue, and it is because the 

 union has been accomplished by a ligamentous formation only that mo- 

 tion becomes practicable. 



The prognosis in a case of fracture in an animal is one of the gravest 

 vital import to the i)atieut, and therefore of serious pecuniary coucern 

 to his owner. The period has not long elapsed when to have received 

 such a hurt was quite equivalent to undergoing a sentence of death for 

 the suftering animal, and perhaps to-day a similar verdict is pronounced 

 in many cases in which the exercise of a little mechanical ingenuity, 

 with a due amount of careful nursing, might secure a contrary result 

 and insure the return of the patient to his former condition of soundness 

 and usefulness. Considered per se, a fracture in an animal is in fact no 

 less amenable to treatment than the same description of injury in any 

 other living being. But the question of the propriety and expediency 

 of treatment is dependent upon certain specific points of collateral con- 

 sideration. 



First. The nature of the lesion itself is a point of paramount impor- 

 tance. A simple fracture occurring in a bone where the ends can be 

 firmly secured in coaptation, presents the most favorable conditions for 

 successful treatment. If it be that of a long bone it will be the less 

 serious if situated at or near the middle of its length than if it were in 

 close proximity to a joint, from the fact that perfect immobility can 

 rarely, in the latter case, be secured without incurring the risk of sub- 

 sequent rigidity of the joint. 



A simple is always less serious than a compound fracture. A com- 

 minuted is always more dangerous than a simple, and a transverse 

 break is easier to treat than one which is oblique. The most serious are 

 those which are situated on parts of the body in which it is difficult to 

 secure perfect immobility, and especially those which are accompanied 

 by severe contusions and lacerations in the soft parts; the protrusion of 

 fragments through the skin ; the division of blood vessels by the broken 

 ends of the bone ; the existence of an articulation near the point to 

 which inflammation is likely to extend; the luxation of a fragment of 

 the bone ; laceration of the periosteum ; the presence of a large number 

 of bony particles, the result of the crushing of the bone — all these are 

 circumstances which discourage a favorable prognosis, and weigh against 

 the hope of saving the patient for future usefulness. 



Fractures which may be accounted curable are those which are not 

 conspicuously visible, as those of the ribs, where displacements are 

 either very limited or do not occur, the parts being kept in situ by the 

 nature of their position, the shape of the bones, the articulations they 

 form with the vertebra, the sternum, or their cartilages of prolonga- 



