y.

FRACTURES.

A fracture is technically called a solution of continuity; but, as the
general reader will imagine the definition can hardly be correct, with
regard to a bone which may be broader than it is long, I will here define
it to be the violent division of a bone into two or more parts.

[Illustration]

Fractures are divided into comminuted, simple, and compound. The
comminuted and compound, for the present purpose, may be regarded as one
and the same; since it is obviously impossible to restore the bone of a
dog which has been crushed into innumerable pieces; and such a state of
the hard structure is scarcely possible to exist without the soft parts,
as flesh or muscle, around the injury being involved, or the lesion
rendered compound as well as comminuted in its nature.

Then it is simple fractures only that have to be dealt with in this place;
and a simple fracture exists when a bone is snapped across into two equal
or unequal pieces. It does not matter at what point the injury may occur;
so that the bone be broken only into two pieces, and none of the flesh be
torn, or the joint involved, the fracture is a simple one. In the dog,
several simultaneous simple fractures may exist; as where the animal
breaks across the whole of the four metatarsal bones proceeding from the
hock to the foot; or snaps, which is of more rare occurrence, the entire
number of metacarpal bones, proceeding from the joint, which is called the
knee of the dog, towards the foot of the animal.

The bones, however, most commonly fractured are the ulna and radius in the
fore-limb, and the tibia and fibula in the posterior extremity. Next to
these in order are the femur or thigh-bone, in the hind-leg, and the
humerus or arm-bone of the anterior limb. Then come the four metacarpal or
metatarsal bones, being the same in number in both legs. These are all the
author undertakes to treat. The first and last he manages pretty
successfully. For the restoration of a fracture, all that is necessary is
to bring the ends which have been divided together, and to keep them in
the place into which your art has brought them. To accomplish this end,
the author is accustomed to cut from a sheet of stout gutta percha three
broad straight ribbons; then to soak these in warm water till they are
pliable, having first cut in them several holes resembling button-holes,
by the aid of a punch and narrow chisel. When they have lain in the warm
water a suff