ispeau injuries oj nones, joints and Muscles. 435 



treated by soothing measures, and if the bones or joint?, 

 become involved, treat as advised for the respective in 

 juries. 



To prevent, let the feet be kept a little bare on the inner 

 side and the shoes slightly leveled off, but avoid lowering 

 the foot or thianing the shoe on the inner side. On the 

 contrary a very slight thickening of the shoe on the inside 

 is sometimes beneficial, by straightening up the fetlock 

 imd removing it from danger. If this fails wear a leather 

 boot with a projecting rim, or a simple woolen bandage. 

 Li weak subjects benefit is often derived from bringing 

 into a better condition of health. 



FEACTUEES OS THE PASTERN BONES. 



These are exceedingly common in horses runniag on 

 hard ground or even on soft movable sand. They are of 

 all degrees of severity, from a simple split without separa- 

 tion of the broken pieces, to a complete shattering of the 

 bone into a dozen fragments or more. Simple fractures 

 are usually oblique, or even vertical, the bone being split 

 in two nearly equal lateral halves, but transverse breaks 

 are also seen. 



Symptoms. In shattered specimens the case is easily 

 made out and the victim should be destroyed at once. In 

 cases of detachment sufficient to allow grating when the 

 bones are moved (flexed and extended) there is as little 

 difficulty. But in cases of splitting without detachment, 

 the parts being held firmly together by the strong fibrous 

 investments, the case is liable to be mistaken. There is 

 the fact that the injury occurred suddenly during action, 

 the horse at once showing lameness, more extreme on hard 

 ground; there is no injury to ligaments nor tendons; but 

 pain when the pastern is fully flexed, and with or without 

 swelling on the bone there is a line of tenderness which 

 can easily be traced with the fingers and corresponds to the 

 fractm-e. 



Treatment. Place the patient ia slings, and if gi.-ating 



