These constitute so interesting a subject in connection with the ailments of the dog, that we are bound to bestow upon them earnest and due consideration; besides, the more scientific and successful views now entertained of the whole question, compared with those prevalent forty or fifty years ago, must be highly gratifying to every admirer of the incessant progress of science, surgery, and medicine towards perfection. Nor is this branch of surgery simply mechanical, or restricted to the consideration of bandages, splints, etc., but comprises questions and investigations not surpassed in respect of their scientific character by any other in the whole range of surgery which appertains to the canine species.

Nor are we without considerable difficulty so certain of ttaining ultimate success as our brethren in the sister profession, because they can place their patients almost always in the proper position, and enforce their maintaining it at their peril. But not so with ours; we cannot command the dog or any subject upon our sick-list to lie still and keep the position in which they are placed. Hence the great drawback to our surgical success.

Now so long as the process by which broken bones unite was less correctly understood, and while the symptoms characteristic of each patient or fracture had been less minutely traced than at the present time, this department, of practice must have been conducted under great disadvantages. The several complications of fracture are also now more accurately comprehended and more judiciously considered. Bandages are applied not for useless display, but to promote and fulfil some more desirable purpose, some indication which the circumstances of the accident truly require to be accomplished.

Let it therefore not be any longer supposed that the treatment of fractures is only a mechanical business, for whoever pretends* to be capable of conducting it efficiently, without a due acquaintance with anatomy and pathology, and the principles on which inflammation, abscesses, gangrene, wounds, ulcers, and various febrile disturbances of the constitution should be treated, must absolutely be a simpleton or an impostor, for all these complications frequently accompany or follow fractures.