Other treatments for the same condition are practised, in which the wound is dusted with powdered iodoform, with potassium permanganate, or with corrosive sublimate, or where the wound, instead of being dusted, has the corrosive sublimate applied in the form of a plug. In each case the preliminary irrigation with the corrosive sublimate solution is dispensed with. This, however, should on no account be omitted. In our opinion it constitutes the very essence of the rationality of the treatment.
(b) Curative.—It may happen, however, and often does, that this first injection of an antiseptic is unsuccessful in preventing organismal infection of the wound. In this case grave constitutional disturbance and other untoward symptoms such as we have already described quickly make their appearance.
The animal should now be placed in slings and preparations made for actively treating the wound with antiseptics. Whether we fail or not, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we have given to the patient the best and the only chance of recovery.
It should be remembered, however, and should be pointed out to the owner, that with purulent arthritis fully developed, with the grave constitutional changes it occasions, and with the ever-present danger of a general septic invasion of the blood-stream, that the human surgeon under such circumstances offers to his patient the alternatives of amputation or probable death. With us no such alternative is possible. It is either return the joint to some semblance of its former usefulness, or destroy the patient.
In this case we advise the injection of the original wound, and also such fistulous openings as may have formed, with the 1 in 1,000 sublimate solution. Also, in order to avoid the sometimes abortive attempts of the antiseptic pad, to maintain a condition of asepsis around the wound, we advise the continual soaking of the whole foot in a cold antiseptic bath. This may be either carbolic acid 1 in 20, or—what is less volatile, perhaps more effectual, and certainly more economical—perchloride of mercury 1 in 1,000.
It has been our good fortune, even when we have seen the foot almost detached from the limb by the devastating inroads of the pus, to see the suppurative process by this means gradually overcome, a reparative anchylosis set in, and the animal restored to good health and usefulness, if not to soundness.
Once the suppurative process is checked and anchylosis commences, it is good treatment to smartly blister the whole of the region of the coronet, the pastern, and the wound itself with a mixed blister of cantharides and biniodide of mercury, repeated at intervals of a fortnight. This prevents to some extent further infection of the wound, and assists also in promoting the changes that tend to anchylosis.
(d) ANCHYLOSIS.
The word anchylosis signifies the stiffening of a joint. When one has read the serious changes occurring within the joint in the more serious forms of arthritis, it is easy to understand how it comes about. In suppurative arthritis, for instance, we have the synovial membrane destroyed, the articular cartilages partly or wholly obliterated, and the former boundaries of the joint entirely lost. If the animal lives, nature is bound to make repair of a sort. The synovial membrane and the articular cartilages utterly destroyed, as we have described, cannot again be replaced. Nature can only build again from such materials as are left to her. In this case the material is bone.
It must be remembered, however, that often the bone has been so diseased that spots of necrosis or caries within it are bound to remain unless moved by operative interference. Such diseased portions, when dealing with the foot, are beyond reach of the surgeon's knife, and we have no alternative but to allow them to remain. We get, therefore, in many cases, a condition of rarefactive ostitis occurring side by side with a slowly progressive caries within the bone, while outside is occurring an osteoplastic periostitis. The concurrence of these conditions leads in time to great increase in size of the parts, together with increasing anchylosis and deformity.