The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

THE KING OF THE COWBOYS.

The case of the celebrated cowboy, Buck Taylor, who met with an accident at Buffalo Bill's "Wild West" last week, is not without surgical interest. The peculiar character of the injury is explained by further particulars of the circumstances under which it was inflicted. He was engaged in a quadrille on horseback, and was passing between two horses when one of them, ridden by a "Western girl," swerved, and left little space for his horse to pass on. He attempted, however, to go forward, when the swerving horse swung itself with great force against his right thigh, and he felt the bone snap as he received the blow. Buck Taylor then tried to rest the injured limb along the back of the horse, but found at once that he had lost all control over the muscles of the thigh; so he threw his arm round the horse's neck, and looked out for the right moment to slip as comfortably as possible on the tan. Unfortunately, he could not control himself as he slid off, but fell on his back and sprained the muscles of his neck. A splint was improvised for the injured thigh without disturbing the patient's clothes, and at the West London Hospital a simple and perfectly transverse fracture of the right thigh-bone was discovered. The chief point of interest in the case was the production of the fracture by direct force applied to the outer aspect of the thigh, not apparently high in degree, and without injury to the soft parts. Only a few similar cases have been recorded. Buck Taylor is quite the hero of the hour, and receives daily a large number of visitors, including many persons of high social position and culture.