ON FRACTURES. 
10 
1 am fully convinced, that none of these extraordinarily sudden 
cases of fracture, under circumstances not sufficient of themselves 
to account for them, do occur without previous injury. I have 
had many proofs of this, and, perhaps, you will admit two or 
three cases of rather recent occurrence in my practice, that may 
not only produce conviction of this fact with some of your readers, 
but act as a beacon by which perhaps a horse may be occasion¬ 
ally saved. 
Case 1.—In the summer of 1836, I was sent for to a horse be¬ 
longing to Mr. J. Beally, Little Bloxwich Hall Farm. On ar¬ 
riving, I found it was a case of compound fracture of the tibia. The 
history of it was this :—The men found the horse in the morning 
with a severe kick in the inside of the thigh : this was perfectly 
evident from both calkings of the shoe having produced 
wounds ; but as he was scarcely lame £tt all, they put him to work. 
He worked some time in a waggon, and then at plough. After 
going a few rounds at this latter employment, in being turned 
very suddenly at one end, the bone was displaced, producing 
that severe laceration of the muscle and skin which was appa¬ 
rent when I saw him. 
Case 2d.—This was a horse belonging to Mr. J. Meanly, Daw 
End, near Rushall. I went to see him on the 8th September, 
1837, and was told that the horse was very lame in the hip joint. 
As soon as I entered the stable, I saw that there was fracture of 
the tibia. There is a particular appearance of the muscles in 
the immediate neighbourhood of the fracture that you can 
scarcely, even at first sight, mistake. From the attempt to sup¬ 
port the limb, instead of the body being supported by it, the 
muscles at that particular spot seem suddenly gathered in, as if 
by an internal ligature, giving a peculiar break in their appear¬ 
ance, instead of that gradual tapering which is seen in health. I 
went up to the horse, and on putting my hand upon the inside 
of the leg, on the spot thus indicated, I found a puncture, as if 
from the heel of a shoe. 1 was instantly told that this was not 
the scat of the lameness, for that he had been kicked there three 
days before, and had never been lame from it: and, strange as 
it may appear, this was the fact, till a very short time before I 
saw him. It was very evident that the fracture was now com¬ 
plete, and that dreadful laceration was produced by every motion 
of the limb. I had him destroyed, and, on examination, I found 
the fracture to be an oblique one, of more than six inches in 
length. This horse had worked three days subsequently to re¬ 
ceiving the kick. He was considered to be the strongest horse in 
the parish, and the day on which I saw him he had been used 
as shaft horse in a waggon heavily laden with lime; and the 
