452 VETERINARY SURGICAL THERAPEUTICS. 
In dogs, the fracture of these bones gets well readily. A bandage left 
on from fifteen days to three weeks insures the union. Many practi- 
tioners employ starched or plastered dressings. 
Compound fractures are treated by temporary antiseptic bandages or a 
fenestrated immovable dressing. 
ALL.— Phalanges. 
Splits and phalangeal fractures are frequent accidents. There are few 
practitioners that have not seen numerous cases. In 1754, Lafosse, Sr., 
published nine observations of fractures of the second and third phalanges. 
Observation V. relates to a horse which, though having made no effort, 
“fractured in twenty pieces the os coronz, without any injury to the os 
pedis or to the tendons.” If traumatisms, jumps, violent strains produce 
them in a certain number of instances, there are cases where fracture 
takes place with a slow gait, after a simple mistep or even without ap- 
parent cause. Reul has related three cases of the coronet, occurring in 
horses in harness, “ without fall or slip.” We have often seen similar 
cases. But ordinarily, in such circumstances there is a split or a raré- 
faction of the bone. 
The first phalanx is most frequently affected. Its fractures are trans- 
versal or longitutinal. Transversal, they involve its superior half. 
Fissures or splits start almost always from the median groove of the su- 
perior face (Peters); they extend to the lower extremity, or, again, they 
are oblique toward one of its borders; sometimes they occupy only a 
part of the height of the bone. Fractures are quite often comminuted; 
in a race horse, Dressler saw the first phalanx broken in nineteen pieces; 
Bonnard counted as many as thirty-four: “five large ones, five smaller, 
twenty-four very small.’ Roeder has seen a horse, which in falling 
fractured the first pastern of both fore and of the right hind leg. Wend- 
‘worth has also seen on a horse the fracture of the first pastern on both 
forelegs. The fractures of she second phalanx are sometimes vertical, at 
others comminuted. In this last variety, the number of pieces varies from 
five to ten (Henon, Miller, Schrader). We have stated that Lafosse 
counted as many as twenty pieces. Henon speaks of a horse where it 
was broken in every one of the four feet. In some exceptional cases, the 
posterior border projecting beyond the superior articular surface has been 
found loose from the bone. Bascon and Dumont have seen that lesion 
on both forelegs. Lafosse, Huzard, Duliége, Adenot, Havemann, Kerst- 
ing, Nocard, Trasbot have related cases of fractures of the ¢hird phalanx. 
Schrader has related cases of it with fractures of the ossified supple- 
mentary cartilage. 
