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 favorable 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 
