Читать книгу Fractures in the Horse - Группа авторов - Страница 14

Fractures have occurred in wild (non‐domesticated) animals throughout their evolution. It has been suggested that horses were initially domesticated in the late Neolithic period: first for food and later for transportation and war [2]. Domestication of Equidae introduced new environments and circumstances particularly as horses were used for work, often were ascribed special value (both economic and emotional) and played important cultural roles in human civilization. There is a dearth of documentation of equine fractures by the ancient Syrian, Egyptian, Persian and Greek civilizations, although in the latter Xenophen (380 BCE) described ‘Rules for the Choice, Management and Training of Horses’ and Aristotle (333 BCE) in ‘The History of Animals’ introduced the concept of gaits. An ancient Greek treatise called the Mulomedicina Chironis has been ascribed to a healer Chiron. There is evidence that this was a real person circa 700 BCE, but confusion is produced by later elevation to the mythologic status of centaur.

In paleopathologic investigations, three healed metacarpal bone fractures dating from the Iron Age (800 BCE–43 CE) have been found in different parts of Europe [3]. These included a compound fracture of what was considered most likely a working mare buried in a human cemetery of the fourth to seventh century BCE at Sindos, Greek Macedonia. The bone was markedly distorted but the animal is thought to have survived for at least three to four years after the injury, and it was suggested that this lame mare may have pulled her ‘loving owner's’ cart to the grave before being sacrificed and laid next to him [4]. A rib fracture in a horse from the Roman Imperial period (27 BCE–284 CE) was found at a site near Seinstedt, Germany [5]. The same group reported a ‘neatly healed’ fractured third metatarsal bone in a horse from the Iron Age sacrificial site of Skeddemosse, Sweden [6], and a fractured metacarpus from a similar period was found in a horse at Tiel‐Passewaaij, the Netherlands [7].

According to Harcourt [cited in 8], an archeologic study of the Roman site of Tripontium, England, found a healed fractured humerus in a horse although there was no evidence to indicate intervention. The paucity of healed fractures in large animals was considered direct evidence of the associated bad prognoses [3]. No archeologic evidence of therapeutic intervention during this period has been found [7, 9]. The possibility had been suggested in a healed metacarpal of an Iron Age horse from Manching [10]. However, the specimen had a complicated fracture that healed with ‘distortion of the bone and development of an enormous callus’, which appears to make this tenuous.

The writings of Hippocrates (considered the father of medicine) in the fourth to fifth century BCE included a text ‘De Fracturis’, which is the first known treatise devoted to the subject. The Hippiatrika, a text compiled in the fifth or sixth century CE, was a compilation of extracts of Greek technical literature on the care and healing of horses. This included a contribution from Apsyrtus, a ‘well‐known horse specialist’ from the fourth century CE [10], who was of the opinion that ‘all fractures below the knee have a good chance of healing’. Later manuscripts published as Hippiatria (1531) or Hippiatrica (1543) also cite Apsyrtus treating fractures below the knee with splints and bandages with cures expected in about 40 days (which must question the diagnosis), while fractures above the knee were considered incurable [11].

The Romans appeared to document little in veterinary medicine until the end of their Western empire when the Byzantine Publius Vegetius (circa 450–500 CE) recognized that diseases of the horse were similar to those suffered by men. Vegetius is often considered the first to have documented hippiatric beliefs and practices. These were almost certainly preceded but records are lacking.