564 
DISLOCATION OF THE FEMUR. 
with the idea that because I only had eight men to the cow, 
that therefore I brought less strength to bear. 
The fixed point to which the breeching was attached more 
than compensated for ten men, it being sufficiently strong 
not to yield to the immense traction exerted. I should 
always recommend such a plan if practicable. There is no 
farmhouse where you cannot make a bed of straw near a tree 
or post, and from a stout branch of the former might be 
suspended a rope to operate as the fulcrum if needed ; but I 
repeat, that the carrying out the principle in practice, under 
very varying circumstances, must be left in a great measure 
to the skill and ingenuity of the operator. 
I wish, in the next place, to draw your attention to sources 
of fallacy in the diagnosis of these hip-joint dislocations, and 
to certain lesions that may occur secondarily. There are 
certain injuries of the femur, of the acetabulum, and of their 
connecting ligaments, the precise nature of which can with 
difficulty be made out. A very accurate examination of the 
parts, compared with the normal condition, is required, and 
more especially with reference to the obliquity of the femur, 
to the flatness or hollow aspect of the thigh in front of this 
bone. Dislocations of the femur may be mistaken with 
fractures of the neck ; or of the upper part of the shaft of the 
same bone. The accompanying drawing of a specimen in 
the Museum of Bologna, shows a fracture of the neck of the 
femur in a cat. The head of the bone was never displaced, 
but a false joint w 7 as formed at the seat of injury. Such a 
fracture, with displacement, especially if it occurred in a large 
quadruped, might present many of the signs of luxation, but 
the shortening of the limb, and the grating that is so readily 
discovered, constitute diagnostic symptoms.* 
* Two days after I bad delivered the above lecture, Mr. Cairn’s cow 
died, apparently from an attack of indigestion. I performed a post-mortem 
examination, and discovered that the ligaments of the joint had all given 
way, were partially softened by inflammation, and the acetabulum was 
filled with semi-organized lymph. The head of the femur was, as I had at 
first diagnosed, in the obturator foramen, but, to my astonishment, was de- 
tached from the body of the bone. Clotted blood, in abundance, surrounded 
it, and thus a large tumour was constituted, which projected into the in- 
terior of the pelvis. I carefully observed, what might prevent me obtain- 
ing evidence of fracture in the first instance. Under the then existing cir- 
cumstances, the broken portions of bone could not be brought in apposition 
owing to the head entering deeply into the obturator foramen. Bony 
grating was the only sign that could have been relied upon in the diagnosis 
of fracture, but the ready displacement after reduction, and the apparent 
possibility of spontaneous return of the head of the femur into the aceta- 
bulum, assured me of a complication the nature of which I had at first 
doubted as injury to the acetabulum itself. I spoke, in my lecture, of the 
