328 DISEASES OF THE HORSE. 



wholly through the medium of a layer of fibrous tissue, and it is 

 because the union has been accomplished by a ligamentous formation 

 only that motion becomes practicable. 



Prognosis. — The prognosis in a case of fracture in an animal is one 

 of the gravest vital import to the patient, and therefore of serious 

 pecuniary concern to his owner. The period has not long elapsed 

 when to have received such a hurt was quite equivalent to undergoing 

 a sentence of death for the suffering animal, and perhaps to-day a 

 similar verdict is pronounced in many cases in: which the exercise 

 of a little mechanical ingenuity, with a due amount of careful nurs- 

 ing, might secure a contrary result and insure the return of the 

 patient to his former condition of soundness and usefulness. 



Treatment. — Considered per se, a fracture in an animal is in fact 

 no less amenable to treatment than the same description of injury 

 in any other living being. But the question of the propriety and 

 expediency of treatment is dependent upon certain specific points of 

 collateral consideration. 



(1) The nature of the lesion is a point of paramount importance. 

 A simple fracture occurring in a bone where the ends can be firmly 

 secured in coaptation presents the most fa.vorable condition for suc- 

 cessful treatment. If it is that of a long bone, it will be the less 

 serious if situated at or near the middle of its length than if it were 

 in close proximity to a joint, from the fact that perfect immobility 

 can rarely, in the latter case, be secured without incurring the risk 

 of subsequent rigidity of the joint. 



A simple is always less serious than a compound fracture. A com- 

 minuted is always more dangerous than a simple, and a transverse 

 break is easier to treat than one which is oblique. The most serious 

 are those which are situated on parts of the body in which it is diffi- 

 cult to obtain perfect immobility, and especially those which are ac- 

 companied with severe contusions and lacerations in the soft parts; 

 the protrusion of fragments through the skin ; the division of blood 

 vessels by the broken ends of the bone ; the existence of an articula- 

 tion near the point to which inflammation is liable to extend; the 

 luxation of a fragment of the bone; laceration of the periosteum; 

 the presence of a large number of bony particles, the result of the 

 crushing of the bone — all these are circumstances which discourage 

 a favorable prognosis, and weigh against the hope of saving the 

 patient for future usefulness. 



Fractures which may be accounted curable are those which are not 

 conspicuously visible, as those of the ribs, where displacements are 

 either very limited or do not occur, the parts being kept in situ by the 

 nature of their position, the shape of the bones, the articulations they 

 form with the vertebra, the sternum, or their cartilages of prolonga- 

 tion; those of transverse processes of the lumbar vertebra; those of 



