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[Chapter XVI — Fractures]
These are of not unfrequent occurrence in the dog; and I once had five cases in my hospital at the same time.
In the human subject, fractures are more frequent in adults, and, perhaps, in old men, than in infants; but this is not the case with the smaller animals generally, and particularly with dogs. Five-sixths of the fractures occur between the time of weaning and the animal being six months old; not, perhaps, because of their chemical composition, that the bones are more fragile at this age; but because young dogs are more exposed to fall from the hands of the persons who carry them, and from the places to which they climb; and the extremities of the bones, then being in the state of
epiphysis
, are easily separated from the body of the bone. When the fracture takes place in the body of the bone, it is transverse or somewhat oblique, but there is scarcely any displacement.
A simple bandage will be sufficient for the reduction of these fractures, which may be removed in ten or twelve days, when the preparatory
callus
has acquired some consistence. One only out of twenty dogs that were brought to me with fractures of the extremities, in the year 1834, died. Two dogs had their jaws fractured by kicks from horses, and lost several of their teeth. In one of them the anterior part of the jaw was fractured perpendicularly; in the other, both branches were fractured. Plenty of good soup was injected into their mouths. Ten or twelve days afterwards, they were suffered to lap it; and in a little while they were dismissed cured.