wn. Carrying weight or moving backward is
impossible. There is excessive mobility below the fracture, and
well-marked crepitation. If there is much displacement, as in an oblique
fracture, there will be considerable shortening of the leg.

While incomplete fractures can not be recognized in the tibia with any
greater degree of certainty than in any other bone, there are some facts
associated with them by which a diagnosis may be justified. The
hypothetical history of a case may serve as an illustration:

An animal has received an injury by a blow or a kick on the inside of
the bone, perhaps without showing any mark. Becoming very lame
immediately afterwards, he is allowed a few days' rest. If taken out
again, he seems to have recovered his soundness, but within a day or
two he betrays a little soreness, and this increasing he becomes very
lame again, to be furloughed once more, with the result of a temporary
improvement, and again a return to labor and again a relapse of the
lameness; and this alternation seems to be the rule. The leg being now
carefully examined, a local periostitis is readily discovered at the
point of the injury, the part being warm, swollen, and painful. What
further proof is necessary? Is it not evident that a fracture has
occurred, first superficial--a mere split in the bony structure, which,
fortunately, has been discovered before some extra exertion or a casual
misstep had developed it into one of the complete kind, possibly with
complications? What other inference can such a series of symptoms thus
repeated establish?

The prognosis of fracture of the tibia, as a rule, must be unfavorable.

_Treatment._--The difficulty of obtaining a union without shortening,
and consequently without lameness, is proof of the futility of ordinary
attempts at treatment, but though this may be true in respect to
fractures of the complete kind, it is not necessarily so with the
incomplete variety, and with this class the simple treatment of the
slings is all that is necessary to obtain consolidation. A few weeks of
this confinement will be sufficient.

With dogs and other small animals there are cases which may be
successfully treated. If the necessary dressings can be successfully
applied and retained, a cure will follow.

FRACTURES OF THE HOCK.

Injuries of the astragalus which had a fatal termination have been
recorded. Fractures of the os calcis have also been observed, but never
with a favorable pro