14 
ON FllACTUllES. 
waggoner, relying on his immense strength, had allowed him to 
sustain the weight of the load down a very steep bridge, at 
which he had been desired always to lock the wheel. The 
consequence was, the immediate displacement of the two parts of 
the bone, and dreadful lacerations of the muscles. 
Case 3d.—This occurred on the 26th of last October, to a horse 
belonging to Messrs. Mills and Bills, iron masters, Darmalaston. 
In taking out a large load of iron, the waggoner had turned up a 
road which (from no warning being given) he was not aware was 
in such a state (from a water-course being taken up across it for 
repair) as precluded the possibility of proceeding along it. He 
could not turn the waggon, and was obliged to yoke the fore 
horses to the back part of it in order to draw it back again. In 
doing this, a part of the iron touched the hindmost horse, and he 
commenced kicking violently. A wound in the thigh was the con¬ 
sequence, and all that the waggoner supposed at that time to be 
the matter. The horse finished his work that day, and was put to 
work again on the following morning. The man said he went stiff, 
but still he was put with others to another load of iron. He did 
not go far, however, before he was incapacitated from proceeding, 
and I was sent for. I found complete fracture of the femur; and, 
after learning the history of the case, and finding that the wound 
and the fracture exactly corresponded, I decided that it was pro¬ 
duced^ at the same time with the wound. Mr. Mills appeared 
very much surprised at this; but he called on me on the follow¬ 
ing day, to say that his servant would bring me the bone, and 
that, on examination, it was perfectly evident that the fracture 
was produced by the bar of iron. It was an oblique fracture, as 
in the former cases. 
The record of such cases as these possesses a certain value, if 
it were only from the circumstance, that, though they were all 
fatal, they were not necessarily so. Every one of them would 
have been curable, if placed in the hands of a veterinary surgeon 
in time. Perhaps you will allow me here to notice a case of this 
kind that I was called in to on the 28th of August last. It was a 
mare, belonging to Mr. Foster Bentley, near Walsall. I found, 
on examination, that there was fracture of the humerus, without 
displacement of the broken parts. The owner put her entirely 
into my care, nothing more was necessary than depletion, abso¬ 
lute rest, astringent applications, and low diet, and she perfectly 
recovered. 
I am decidedly of opinion, that in all such cases as those men¬ 
tioned in the former part of this paper, the bone has, from some 
previous accident, as a blow or kick, been starred or cracked, 
though the parts still retain their relative positions, from the 
