48 ROYAL COLLEGE OP VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
but the substance of the bone was scooped out into a small 
furrow. 1 could also feel with my finger the extensor 
tendon. There being no fracture, and the hock-joint having 
escaped injury, I was not without some hope but that the 
mare might do well. 
She was placed in a quiet loose box, and the most strict 
antiphlogistic treatment adopted, consisting of bleeding, 
very moderate purgation, soothing fomentations, and poul- 
tices continually applied. A little more than a week from 
the infliction of the injury, I was most agreeably surprised : 
all the acute symptoms had subsided, the mare w r as appa- 
rently free from sympathetic fever, and she could make a 
fair walk of her own accord round the box. But yet I was 
extremely jealous, through former experience, at the absence 
of one symptom, viz., a salutary tumefaction of the injured 
limb: if possible it appeared even less in circumference 
than the sound one. 
On the morning of about the ninth day from the accident, 
the case assumed a new aspect ; tetanic symptoms having 
set in most acutely; there being extreme rigidity of the 
muscles of the neck and throat, and the membrana nictitans 
was drawn powerfully over the eye, while the lameness of 
the injured limb had vanished ! The day following the mus- 
cular rigidity was general throughout the frame, the respiration 
violently disturbed, and accompanied with profuse perspira- 
tions ; upon the thirteenth day the case terminated fatally. 
The subject, being a thorough-bred animal, and remarkably 
clean limbed, I regarded it as a rare and fitting opportunity 
for a minute dissection of the nervous tissues of the injured 
limb ; and this I prosecuted most carefully and patiently to 
the extent that the scalpel and naked eye could aid me 
throughout the whole nervous structure of the extremity, 
but could find nothing abnormal. When about to quit the 
dissecting-board in disappointment, it struck me that I 
would lay open all the vascular trunks, — arteries, and veins ; 
and I immediately began with the external pastern artery . 
This, to my surprise , I found plugged , to the extent of an inch and 
a half with a tough fibrinous deposit of a pale straw colour, firmly 
adherent to the lining membrane of the vessel . The artery was 
completely impervious , there being no channel left in the centre of 
the plug. Upon laying open the corresponding artery over the 
inside of the pastern joint , the abnormal deposit was precisely the 
same, but the obstruction occupied a greater length. These two 
arteries unite and form a single trunk above the pastern joint, 
and there the vessel was intact and perfectly pervious. I 
found on dissection, that where the scooping of the bone by 
