Suppuration is rapidly checked and repair becomes regular. The pain and lameness progressively diminish, and recovery may be complete.
It is advisable to assist this internal antiseptic treatment by external stimulants and by the use of a blister. Solutions of greater strength than 1 part of sublimate to 500 of glycerine are only required during the first few days of treatment and until suppuration diminishes. Later, they prove irritant, and interfere with healing.
TRAUMATIC ARTICULAR SYNOVITIS—TRAUMATIC ARTHRITIS—“OPEN ARTHRITIS.”
Fig. 19.—Suppurative arthritis of the fetlock.
It has been described above how primary inflammation of the articular synovial membrane produced by a wound may rapidly develop into suppurating arthritis.
Symptoms. The pain is very marked at the moment when the accident occurs, but this pain, due to the mechanical injury inflicted, diminishes or completely disappears after some hours. Soon, however, synovial discharge sets in, announcing the onset of traumatic synovitis. At first limpid, it soon becomes turbid, then curdled, and finally grumous, purulent and greyish in colour.
Pain then returns, rapidly becomes intense, continuous and lancinating. It produces lameness, sometimes so severe that no weight whatever can be borne on the limb. A diffuse, œdematous, warm and extremely sensitive swelling then rapidly develops around the whole of the injured joint. General disturbance, with fever and loss of appetite, appears, indicating a very alarming condition.
It is sometimes a little difficult to differentiate between this condition and that due to injury of a tendon sheath, but as a rule diagnosis is easy.
Prognosis is very grave. Life is threatened, and wasting occurs very rapidly. Infection of the synovial membrane is soon followed by necrosis and erosion of the articular cartilages, as well as by softening and inflammatory change in the ligaments, etc.