Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Fracture

FRACTURE, in mineralogy, the irregular surface produced by breaking a mineral across, as distinguished from splitting it along the planes of cleavage. The chief kinds of fracture enumerated by William Phillips and others are conchoidal, even, uneven, splintery, and hackly.

In surgery, a solution of continuity in a bone. It is said to be simple when the bone only is divided, and compound when there is also a wound of the integuments communicating with the bone, which in such cases generally protrudes. In a comminuted fracture, the bone is broken into several pieces, and in a complicated fracture there is in addition to the injury done to the bone a lesion of some considerable vessel, nervous trunk, etc. Fractures are also termed transverse, oblique, etc., according to their direction.