FRACTURE OF BOTH HUMERI. 
279 
and a quantity of blood and serum escaped with some shat¬ 
tered muscle and several small fragments of bone. The limb 
was then removed, and also the posterior extremity of the 
same side, and the bodj^ rolled over for the removal of the 
other limbs, when, curious enough, the other fore extremity 
was found to be also broken, the fracture being worse if 
possible than its fellow. 
The internal viscera were found to be healthy, but the 
spine had sustained a severe injury, which commenced at about 
the seventh dorsal vertebra. For five or six vertebral lengths 
it was curved on itself, and the intervertebral discs and liga¬ 
ments were very much injured. On cutting into the spinal 
thaeca there was considerable congestion of the vessels and 
several ecchymosed spots, which lesions no doubt gave rise to 
the paralysis. 
I should be glad if you would give your opinion of the 
cause of the fracture of the two humeri. There is every 
reason to believe that the fracture did not occur after she 
fell on the road ; and further, it appears that this was the only 
fall the mare had had. There was not the least abrasion of 
the skin, or the slightest external injury to be discovered; 
indeed, not a hair seemed turned the wrong way. The man^s 
statement, to say the least of it, is ambiguous, and furnishes 
no satisfactory explanation. The mare was leaped through the 
day ; indeed, in the morning she was taken into a ploughed 
field and galloped round it, and twice put at the fence. The 
first time she refused, but the second time she took it. I 
may remark that she was turned in a circle of very limited 
' circumference, the ground being both deep and soft. Would 
it be possible for the mischief then to be inflicted, and for the 
extremities of the fractured bones to remain in apposition 
until the latter part of the day, when from some ill-understood 
cause displacement took place? The horsebreaker led her 
some distance previous to her falling, and he remarked that 
she reeled like a drunken man. 
REMARKS ON THE ABOVE CASE BY PROEESSOE, VARNELL. 
The immediate causes of fracture are, as a rule, easy to 
determine, as are those also which predispose bones to such a 
lesion ; but in this instance recorded by j\lr. Peech neither the 
one nor the other seems easy of explanation. Even the time 
when the fracture occurred is not positively known. 
The filly is described as being three years old, but the 
