The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2) / Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field

by William Taplin

WOUNDS

—are well known to be occasioned by various means; and, in the strictest signification, imply an accidental separation of parts, or solution of continuity, by some sharp instrument, suddenly and accidentally, or wilfully introduced. In all recent wounds casually encountered, and in a bleeding state, (if not deeply seated,) little more is required, or can indeed be effected by the most expert practitioner, than to absorb the flux of blood, and then to bring the edges of the wound as nearly into contact with each other as circumstances will admit, either by suture or bandage, where the seat of injury will admit of such process; which is not always the case; wounds sometimes happening where the edges of the separated parts cannot be brought into any degree of union, and the cure can only be effected by incarnation. In some circumstances, wounds are sustained in such singular situations, and across such large muscles, that the insertion of stitches, to secure the edges, would prove of no effect, as the whole would inevitably rupture upon every exertion of the horse, in either laying down or getting up.

Wounds of magnitude vary so much in appearance, as influenced by the healthy or morbid state of the body, the proper or improper mode of treatment, or even the changes in the weather, that no precise and invariable plan can be derived from books, or inculcated by the pen, but what must necessarily become subject to such alterations as prudence may prompt, or the judicious practitioner point out. In all wounds of the smaller kind, and where neither the arteries or the tendinous parts are affected, dressings of mild digestive or other emollient unguents, upon pledgets of lint, with a soft bed of tow, and proper covering for the whole, will promote a speedy incarnation, when cicatrization will follow of course. Wounds of other kinds are produced by different means, and require modes of treatment in a degree adapted to their magnitude, and the causes by which they have been occasioned. See Abscess, Fistula, and Strangles.