294 PRINCIPLES OF VETERINARY SURGERY 



Special course of action, but the trauma may in turn reveal 

 the general condition of the injured subject. A long time 

 has elapsed since Mae Schiller insisted on the importance 

 of traumatism in tuberculosis localization. Although this 

 action may today be challenged, it seems that good reasons 

 are on the side of the German experimenters. Has not Peuch 

 succeeded in disclosing the presence of the bacillus of Koch 

 in the pus collected in the passage of a seton in a tubercu- 

 lous cow? The introduction of pneumococcus into the tra- 

 chea of sheep leaves the animal unaffected so long as the 

 trachea has not been wounded. The bacillus of symptomatic 

 anthrax, when introduced into the blood, produces no in- 

 jurious effect, but let any part of the body be wounded and 

 an anthracoid tumor will develop. 



Without insisting on these examples, which belong to 

 the domain of general pathology, there can be no doubt that 

 every injured tissue, whatever may be the nature of the 

 initial lesion, is placed at a manifest disadvantage from the 

 point of view of protection and repair. Disease imprints on 

 the tissue an altered vital action and modifies the energies 

 of the cellular interchanges. The organic elements, rendered 

 ansemic, protect themselves badly, and become impaired by 

 morbid absorption for want of sufficient destruction of poi- 

 sonous svibstances, and the stagnation of the products of dis- 

 assimilation. The influence of diabetes on the evolution 

 of wounds is common knowledge, and the* effect of albu- 

 minuria and of cancerous diatheses, although less known 

 among domestic animals than among human beings, never- 

 theless exists. Cadiot and Almy report a case of a dog af- 

 fected with sarcoma at the head of the femur, which, when 

 irritated by cauterization, soon became general. 



The age of the wounded animal can no longer be ignored 

 in estimating the gravity of traumatisms. The young resist 

 them better than old animals which have impaired nutrition, 



