DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 189 



time, but the horse would have got well without it. Still I did not 

 change m}' opinion. His horse went nicely for two or three years, 

 when he suddenly became lame in the other lea:. He rubbed lini- 

 ment, Kendall's spavin cure, salt and vinegar and everything else 

 he could think of without any benefit, and after six months or more, 

 the horse growing lamer every day, he brought him to me. ''There," 

 said he, ''call that a spavin, will you?" there was not the slightest 

 enlargement, but the horse was dead lame, and the other leg all right. 

 I rode after him. Said I, "Yes, that is the very trouble again." 

 Said he, "Don't you treat any other disease than spavins?" Said I, 

 "Not in your horses." He was a little discouraged, for it was a fine 

 horse and cost considerable money. I told him what I would do. 

 He said, "Take him and do what you like ; I have got sick of driv- 

 ing that horse." This was quite a severe case and worse than before. 

 I fired and blii*tered it. The horse, in the course of two or three 

 Bionths, began to improve. He turned the horse out to pasture late 

 in the fall, and during a cold storm the horse was attacked with lung 

 fever and died. He reported that his horse was dead, and asked 

 if I wanted those joints. "Yes," said I, "and I guess it is provi- 

 dential." "Well," said he, ''you have got to stand or fall by what 

 we find." ''Yes, and I suppose you will do the same?" He had the 

 joints taken off and the meat removed from them nicely. I had 

 called his attention to this very specimen that I now hold in my hand 

 and told him his horse's joints would turn out like this. He brought 

 these joints in and said, "Get that old bone you showed me ;" and 

 on comparing the joints they were very similar. Any man could see 

 that there was a spavin. I had cured one and the other was just on 

 the point of being anchylosed when the horse died. The treatment 

 is similar to that in ring-bone, firing and blistering. In fact ring- 

 bone, splint and spavin are the same disease, essentially, only lo- 

 cated on diflTerent joints ; ring-bones are on portions before and behind, 

 right and left ; splints on all the legs, growing the splints to the 

 cannon-bone ; spavin on the ankle or instep of the two hind legs, 

 while there is a similar disease forward on the carpus, which is the 

 name of the whole joint that corresponds to our wrist, and hence 

 carpitis is an ossific inflammation of that joint. 



Perhaps I have talked long enough on this subject, but I want to 

 make this matter plain to 3'ou. There is a great deal of ignorance, 

 Dot onl}' among owners of horses, but among the so-called horse 

 doctors. I presume you have all heard and known of the treatment 



