e
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 l