<528 
REPORTS OF CASES. 
external opening of which was about on a line with the scapulo¬ 
humeral articulation, the tract extending downwards and back¬ 
wards for fully sixteen inches. Owing to the nature of the 
injury, suturing by any of the various methods employed was 
quite out of the question; consequently the only thing to be 
done was to assist nature in doing her work by treating the 
wound antiseptically. This was done by daily irrigations with 
a solution of carbolic acid of the ordinary strength, but in spite 
of my care the granulating process did not progress either 
rapidly or favorably. Nevertheless, I kept^ up the treatment, 
confident that antisepsis would in the end win the battle. 
About fourteen days after being admitted, a large swelling 
made its appearance upon the animal’s side; this swelling was 
eight inches in diameter, and was situated over the tenth rib, 
about twelve inches below the vertebral column, and was very 
hot and painful upon pressure. To this swelling I had hot 
fomentations applied at regular intervals during the day for two 
days, at the end of which time it appeared as a large abscess, 
which I opened, and from which just seventeen ounces of pus 
escaped. 
Upon exploring the resulting cavity with my finger, I felt 
something which I at first thought was a portion of a fractured 
rib, but upon its extraction it proved to be a piece of leather 
three inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide. At first 
I was at a loss to account for the presence of this piece of leather 
in such an unaccustomed place, but the circumstances of the 
accident furnished a clue, and it proved to be a piece of the 
collar which the horse wore at the time of the accident, it 
having entered with the shaft in the latter’s course. 
After the removal of this piece of leather, I probed the 
cavity and found a tract running forward, which my longest 
probe failed to explore fully. Realizing that “ necessity is the 
mother of invention,” I made a probe of a piece of bale-wire 
and by its aid ascertained that the tract led forward and down¬ 
ward toward the bottom of the opening made by the shaft; 
seeing this, I introduced another probe into the original wound 
and discovered what I had already suspected—that the two 
tracts were continuous. 
After this the wound healed as readily as could be expected, 
considering the poor drainage afforded, and the animal was dis¬ 
charged. 
But certain questions are still unsettled in my mind con¬ 
cerning the migration of that piece of leather. In the first 
