268 PRINCIPLES OF VETERINARY SURGERY 



I. THE EXAMINATION.— A very careful examina- 

 tion of a wound must precede all other steps of treatment. 

 In no case must this step be omitted, and in no case must it 

 be carelessly or ignorantly performed. A wound that might 

 on casual inspection appear to be a slight dermal laceration, 

 might subsequently prove to be a serious penetrating wound 

 of the thorax or abdomen. A wound may contain a foreign 

 body, a spicula of bone, a necrotic cartilage, slough, or a 

 recess to harbor wound secretions, which, if not discovered, 

 would materially accentuate its seriousness and prevent its 

 cicatrization in the shortest possible time. 



The examination of a wound should include its history, 

 which in turn reveals: (i) Its duration; (2) its previous 

 symptoms; (3) its previous treatment; (4) the nature of 

 the object with which it was inflicted; (5) the nature and 

 possibly the virulence of the infectious matter conveyed into 

 it. 



I. The Duration. — The date of the accident is always 

 taken into account first of all in making an inquiry about 

 any given trauma, for here several important deductions 

 are made. Certain phenomena may be serious at one stage 

 and quite trivial at another. For example, severe lame- 

 ness following the infliction of a wound may be a trivial 

 matter, while the same degree of lameness on the second, 

 third or fourth day would indicate the existence of serious 

 trouble. Again, a certain amount of oedema at different 

 stages of the process of repair points to entirely different 

 conditions. An encroaching, painful oedema appearing 

 twenty-four hours after a wound is inflicted would be re- 

 garded as threatening, while the same amount on the third 

 or fourth day or at the end of a week might be expected as 

 the natural result of any infected wound. The signs of in- 

 fection that follow soon after the wound is inflicted are gen- 



