428 
WOUND IN THE BREAST OF A MARE. 
and perhaps, from a mistaken idea, being seldom willing (if his 
opinion be asked) to treat them. But this I must say to the junior 
member of the faculty, if he intends being a general practitioner 
he must study to make himself competent to treat the diseases of 
all our domesticated animals; and this he can never do without the 
most careful observation and particular attention, and attentively 
studying the different characters and varying symptoms of each 
disease, as in country practice they present themselves before him : 
always remembering 
“To cast round the world an equal eye, 
And feel for all that live.” 
Wound in the Breast of a Mare. 
Case I. — My attendance was required to a mare that, through 
an act of wantonness, had run violently against the handle of a 
plough, which had entered a little above the breast-bone, almost 
contiguous to the trachea, and extended upwards along the fore 
part of the shoulder-blade, causing a wound of a most alarming 
aspect. 
My prognosis in the case was unfavourable. The horse-keeper 
had informed me there was a portion of the handle missing, and 
that it was his belief it was remaining in the wound. In this opi- 
nion I did not at first coincide, believing, if such were, the case, I 
could have detected it by examination. My probes, however, 
which I had with me were too short ; and it being night, I desisted 
from any further examination, ordered the place to be kept well 
fomented, put the horse on an antiphlogistic regimen, gave a dose 
of opening medicine, and ordered that she be bled if any irritative 
fever set in, the pulse not warranting me to abstract blood at this 
time. I attended again early next morning, and, from being better 
prepared, 1 soon found that the missing portion of the handle re- 
mained deeply imbedded in the wound, almost as high up as the 
top of the shoulder-blade. Now, as nothing less than an operation 
would relieve the animal from the foreign body, I took a scalpel, cut 
right down upon it, and with very little trouble extracted the portion 
of handle which had been missing. Its length measured four-and-a 
half inches, and at one end two-and-a-half in thickness, the other 
terminating with a sharp point. The large end or base had entered 
the wound first, and, by the force with which the mare had run 
against the plough (it being an iron shaft with a wood handle), must 
have been a considerable way up the shoulder before it had broken, 
as the shaft of the plough shewed marks of having been deeply 
buried in that part. I next inserted a portion of tow through the 
two openings, ordered it to be kept constantly wet with digestive 
liniment, the surrounding parts to be well fomented, and the mare 
