FISTULA. 
517 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
FISTULA. 
By Prof. M. H. Reynolds, M.D.V.M., University of Minnesota. 
Read before the United States Veterinary Medical Association, and Internatioi al 
Veterinary CoDgress, Chicago, Oct. 18th, 1893. 
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 castrations, there is probably no one 
class of patients with which rural practitioners deal more 
commonly, and none are more disagreeable or more unsatis¬ 
factory. We discuss them at every meeting of our State 
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, 
just as slow and just as liable to recur. 
A thorough discussion of the anatomy concerned in the 
question of fistula of the cervical and anterior dorsal regions 
calls for a study of thirty-two pairs of muscles, nineteen pairs 
of nerves, one ligament and twenty pairs of arteries and their 
associated veins; but only the more important can be dis¬ 
cussed in a paper of this length. 
The muscles are counted as follows: Paniculus carnosus, 
one; all the superior cervical, numbering seventeen; all of the 
inferior cervical, numbering eleven ; supra and infra spinatus 
of the external scapular, and one internal scapular, the sub- 
scapularis ; four from the dorsal region, trapezius, small an¬ 
terior serratus, ilio-spinalis and common intercostal. In the 
costal region, we will count about four of the external inter- 
costals. In ordinary practice, however, we rarely find but 
seventeen pairs of muscles in the entire body associated with 
this pathological condition. 
For brevity’s sake, the blood and nerve supply is given 
with the myology. An operator who cares to become an 
expert in the treatment ol these cases must know where 
