604 NAVICULAR DISEASE, OR NAVICULAR JOINT LAMENESS. 



exaggerated notions of the cause, prevalence, and character, 

 the horse-owners have been pecuniary losers, our law courts 

 the scene of conflicting evidence often discreditable to our 

 calling, and the result wrong decisions by juries. 



Navicular disease is a state that, by proper management 

 of horses and their feet by shoeing, should be prevented. 

 It is not present in more than one case in ten, if so many, 

 where it is pronounced to exist. Nor is the early, or any 

 stage, so hopeless and unamenable to proper treatment as 

 has been supposed ; we have attained success, and been 

 gaining evidence of late years, tending to establish the 

 above propositions. We claim merit for the elimination, 

 as far as our practice and teaching has had influence, of 

 the absolutely destructive measures in vogue, viz., bleed- 

 ing, setoning, blistering, firing, &c., and instead, attend 

 to those hygienic means for the restoration of the foot 

 which long experience has enabled us to devise, besides 

 the knowledge derived from all available sources, compris- 

 ing that of writers of past and present times. Shoeing is 

 our sheet anchor, both as the means of conserving the foot 

 and tending to its restoration, whilst primary and collateral 

 conditions are not to be regarded as insignificant, and 

 these have been mostly referred to in the preceding pages. 



