158 VETERINARY SURGICAL THERAPEUTICS. 
in a mine upon burning scums, with their feet so burnt that even their 
shoes “ had reddened with the heat.” With most animals, but especially. 
with horses, on which we use fire so frequently for a therapeutical object, 
burns of the skin are a possible and often serious accident. When 
the hot shoe is applied too long, on the plantar surface, during the pro- 
cess of shoeing, too much heat may be produced or the velvety tissue 
burnt. Also burns may be due to viciousness. Gohier treated a horse 
which had had his genital organs all burnt with flaming straw by his 
cruel driver to make him start a too heavily loaded wagon. 
The gravity of burns depends on their extent and their depth, but 
above all upon the former. A circumscribed, though deep, burn seldom 
brings on fatal complications, while wide burns of the second or even 
first degree may be accompanied with congestive visceral lesions or 
septic accidents which kill after a lapse of time varying from a few days 
to several weeks. In general, when the burn has some extent, one 
ought, in order to give his prognosis, take into consideration the im- 
portance of the organs affected: skin, subcutaneous tissues, mucous 
membranes, large blood-vessels, important nervous branches, articula- 
tions, tendons and their sheaths, or organs of sense. Sometimes the 
lesions are limited to external regions ; at others the viscera or the res- 
piratory apparatus are affected. Pseudo-membranous coryza that 
Ferrier has observed in horses that had been caught in a fire, laryngitis 
with cedema of the glottis, and broncho-pneumonia, are accidents 
whose prognosis is serious. Pleuritis and pneumonia after burns of the 
walls of the chest, peritonitis and gastro-enteritis after those of the ab- 
domen, have also been observed. The suppuration which results from 
the sloughing of the eschars is ordinarily more abundant than in most 
other necrotic lesions. 
Burns with sloughs demand a long treatment; the sloughing of the 
mortified tissues generally requires from two to three weeks. The parts 
disorganized with fire, slough more quickly than with’chemical caustics ; 
and if a comparison be made between those, noticeable differences will 
be observed: the eschars of corrosive sublimate are less extensive and 
drop more rapidly than those of arsenious acid. On horses burnt with 
quicklime, Rey has had to treat extensive detachments of skin, and 
wounds in which cicatrization was very difficult to obtain. 
From a therapeutical point of view, we may consider three degrees of 
burns, In the sz, there is only scorching of the hair and slight in- 
flammation of the skin; in the second, there is phlegmasia more marked 
and a formation of vesicles or of pustules; in the ¢tzrd, there is carbon- 
ization of the tegumentary membrane or intense inflammation of the 
skin, sometimes of the tissues underneath, and consecutive gangrene. 
Burns of the first degree, when not extensive, demand only very 
simple treatment ; cold aspersions, white lotion compresses of sulphate 
