404 
SPRAINS OF THE SHOULDER 
teum around the articulation. When the lesions of this articu- 
lation are of a serious character, and of long standing, the 
muscles of the croup lose their red colour, and waste away. 
All these lesions are doubtless occasionally of extremely dif- 
ferent character, as are the lamenesses that result from them. 
Almost all the post-mortem examinations that I have made have 
been of horses that have been very lame, and for a long time. 
It may probably be the case, that soon after the accident no very 
well-marked lesion can be discovered, because the lameness is 
occasioned by distention of the ligaments. The immediate 
effect of the distention needs not to be very apparent ; they 
are the consequences of this distention which are most visible 
to the anatomist. 
All these lamenesses of the upper portions of the extremities 
are not produced by sprains of the articular ligament. Without 
enumerating all the causes that are immediately evident to the 
practised eye, I may mention the muscular ruptures, of which 
traces are found in the opening of dead animals. In these cases 
it is not an entire muscle that is torn, nor a portion of muscle 
of a certain extent, but a greater or less number of fibres, 
scattered here and there in the body of the muscle. When we 
divide these muscles in the direction of their length, we can see, 
at different depths, traces of the fibres that have been destroyed. 
We find blood effused in the inter-fibrillary spaces, the elements 
of which are to a greater or less extent separated : the cruor is 
isolated from the serum, which is often seen under the form of 
a bloody jelly. The lamenesses produced by this lesion are 
frequently cured, by reason of the great vitality of the muscles, and 
the little pain which wounds of them cause, and also on account of 
the neighbouring and kindred powers which contribute their aid 
in progression, when other muscles are weakened or destroyed. 
M. de Nanzio has assured me that his mode of treatment is 
directed simply to these distentions of the articular ligaments. 
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, always to affirm to which of 
these causes some of the diseases of the upper portions of the 
limbs are to be attributed ; but I think that I have remarked some 
shades of difference in their symptoms. In some cases I have 
observed that the muscles were from the beginning exceedingly 
tender and painful, and harder than in their natural state — that 
they form a prominence that can be readily seen on comparing the 
two sides of the croup ; and that this sensibility and projection 
disappear, and are succeeded by a marked want of sensibility, and 
by a depression of the croup, that announces a wasting away of the 
muscles. In other cases there was no unusual pain or swelling 
of the croup, at the commencement of the disease a motion in 
