American Veterinary Review. 
JULY, 1901. 
All communications for publication or in reference thereto should be addressed to Prop. 
Roscoe R. Bell, Seventh Ave. Union St., Borough of Brooklyn, New York City. 
EDITORIAL. 
EUROPEAN CHRONICLES. 
“ Breaking-Down.”— Very few are there of our American 
colleagues who have not met in their practice those cases which 
are registered under the name of u break-down,” and which oc¬ 
cur almost instantaneously, leaving an animal with his fetlock 
down, almost or even touching the ground, the toe turned up¬ 
wards, and for which, of course, no treatment is possible. When 
post-mortems are made the lesions are found in the fibrous ap¬ 
paratus of the lower part of the leg, most commonly on the 
suspensory ligament, whose bifurcating branches are more or 
less torn from their sesamoidal insertion; perhaps also the 
tendons of the flexors of the phalanges are involved, and with 
those periarticular lesions of almost characteristic nature. In 
other cases the lesion occurs below the fetlock, at the os pedis, 
where the plantar aponeurosis is, so to speak, torn from the 
bone. Not uncommonly structural changes are observed in the 
bone and evidences of osteoporosis, softening and degeneration, 
are found to explain the giving way or rather the tearing away 
which brings on the inability of the fetlock to fulfil its func¬ 
tion of support. We remember that some years ago, talking 
of this form of disease, which we thought was quite more fre¬ 
quent in the United States than in Europe, Prof. Nocard sug¬ 
gested to us the possibility of the tendinous or ligamentous 
degeneration being due to parasitic affections of those tissues. 
For some time we had no occasion to observe other cases, but 
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