alent to undergoing a sentence
of death for the suffering animal, and perhaps to-day a similar verdict
is pronounced in many cases in which the exercise of a little mechanical
ingenuity, with a due amount of careful nursing, might secure a contrary
result and insure the return of the patient to his former condition of
soundness and usefulness.

_Treatment._--Considered per se, a fracture in an animal is in fact no
less amenable to treatment than the same description of injury in any
other living being. But the question of the propriety and expediency of
treatment is dependent upon certain specific points of collateral
consideration.

(1) The nature of the lesion is a point of paramount importance. A
simple fracture occurring in a bone where the ends can be firmly secured
in coaptation presents the most favorable condition for successful
treatment. If it is that of a long bone, it will be the less serious if
situated at or near the middle of its length than if it were in close
proximity to a joint, from the fact that perfect immobility can rarely,
in the latter case, be secured without incurring the risk of subsequent
rigidity of the joint.

A simple is always less serious than a compound fracture. A comminuted
is always more dangerous than a simple, and a transverse break is easier
to treat than one which is oblique. The most serious are those which are
situated on parts of the body in which it is difficult to obtain perfect
immobility, and especially those which are accompanied with severe
contusions and lacerations in the soft parts; the protrusion of
fragments through the skin; the division of blood vessels by the broken
ends of the bone; the existence of an articulation near the point to
which inflammation is liable to extend; the luxation of a fragment of
the bone; laceration of the periosteum; the presence of a large number
of bony particles, the result of the crushing of the bone--all these are
circumstances which discourage a favorable prognosis, and weigh against
the hope of saving the patient for future usefulness.

Fractures which may be accounted curable are those which are not
conspicuously visible, as those of the ribs, where displacements are
either very limited or do not occur, the parts being kept in situ by the
nature of their position, the shape of the bones, the articulations they
form with the vertebra, the sternum, or their cartilages of
prolongation; those of transverse processes of the lumbar