326 



poor beast is under sentence of death, and every consideration of inter- 

 est and of humanity demands an anticipation of nature's evident in- 

 tent in the quick and easy execution of the sentence. 



One of the essentials of treatment, and probably an indispensable 

 condition when recovery is in any wise attainable, is the suspension of 

 the patient in slings. He should be continued in them as long as he can 

 be made to submit quietly to their restraint. 



X«xa^ions.— Strength and solidity are so combined in the formation of 

 the joints of our large animals that dislocations or luxations are inju- 

 ries which are but rarely encountered. They are met with but seldom 

 in cattle and less so in horses, while dogs and smaller animals are more 

 often the sufierers. 



The accident of a luxation or (its synonym) dislocation {disiilacement) 

 is less often encountered in the animal races than in man. This is not 

 because the former are less subject to occasional violence involving 

 powerful muscular contractions, or are less often exposed to casualties 

 similar to those which result in luxations in the human skeleton, but 

 because it requires the cooperation of conditions, anatomical, physio- 

 logical, and perhaps mechanical, present in one of the races and lacking 

 in the other, but which can not in every case be clearly defined. Per- 

 haps the greater relative length of the bony levers in the human for- 

 mation may constitute a cause of the difference. 



Among the predisposing causes in* animals, caries of articular sur- 

 faces, articular abscesses, excessive dropsical conditions, degenerative 

 softening of the ligaments, and any excessive laxity of the soft struc- 

 tures, may be enumerated. 



The symptoms of fractures and of dislocations are not always so va- 

 riant as to preclude the possibility of error in determining a case without 

 a thorough examination, but the essential difference, as it must always 

 exist, must always be discoverable. 



In a dislocation there is one very peculiar and characteristic feature 

 in the impossibility of motion associated with an excessive liberty of 

 movement— the impossibility of active or controlled motion, and a 

 facility of passive movement (or movableness) at either the affected 

 joint or at another of the same leg near to it. In a dislocation of the 

 scapulo-humeral (or shoulder) joint the animal possesses no power of 

 motion over the limb — uo muscular contraction can avail to cause it to 

 perform its various functions— but in the hands of the surgeon it may 

 be made to describe a series of movements which would be simply 

 impossible with the joint in a state of integrity. Both fractures and 

 luxations are marked by deformity, but while in a fracture with dis- 

 placement there will usually be a shortening of the leg, a dislocation 

 may be accompanied by either a shortening or a lengthening. Swelling 

 of the parts is usually a well-defined feature of these injuries. 



With all this similarity in the symptomatology of luxations and 

 fractures, there is one sign which either by its presence or its absence 



