FISTULA. 
355 
nation have always been from those born and reared on farms. 
It must continue to be so. And the more prosperous the rural 
population is, the larger proportion of able and faithful young 
men will it furnish for the service of the City, State and 
Nation. 
FISTULA. 
By Dr. J. T. Nattress, Delavan, Iowa. 
A paper read before the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Society. 
There are few questions in the whole field of veterinary 
science of which the young practitioner feels that he knows 
more, and the older wishes he did know more, than those of 
fistula. Aside from castration, there is probably no one class of 
patients with which country practitioners deal more commonly, 
and none are more disagreeable or more unsatisfactory. We 
discuss them at every meeting of an association, so do our 
sister associations, and yet we use about the same old treatment 
as did our predecessors half a century ago. They are just as 
dirty and just as disagreeable to treat, they are just as slow in 
healing and just as liable to recur again. 
A thorough discussion in the anatomy concerned in the 
question of fistula of the cervical and anterior dorsal regions 
calls for the study of several pairs of muscles, nerves and liga¬ 
ments, arteries and their associated veins, but will not discuss 
them minutely, for I trust you are one and all thoroughly 
acquainted with them and their location, if you have treated 
any number of fistula. I have no doubt but what you do; in 
ordinary practice, however, we rarely pay any attention to the 
small muscles; the larger ones are easily located. 
For brevity sake, the blood and nerve supply will be left 
with the operator. An operator who cares to become an expert 
in the treatment of these cases must know where those muscles 
are, their origin, insertion, direction of the fibres and their 
