68 The Management and Treatment of the Horse, 



cause has been a splint not larger than a grain of wheat 

 close up under the knee, and could be detected only 

 by an excited action of the pulse over the part affected. 

 This sort of thing often causes the groom and owner 

 much anxiety; knowing the horse to be lame and being 

 unable to find the cause, it is put down to everything 

 but the right. It will be called chest founder, chronic 

 founder, shoulder pitched, and many other things. When 

 a boy I once asked the late Professor Dick what was 

 chronic founder, and was told it was a very convenient 

 phrase to use when you have a horse lame in the foot 

 and cannot find the seat of lameness. "We call it," said the 

 Professor, " chronic founder, and send many fools away 

 satisfied." The symptoms of splint lameness are point- 

 ing the foot, resting the toe only upon the ground ; the 

 horse has great difficulty in moving forward, cannot 

 bend its knee, but can go back, which a horse lame in 

 the shoulder cannot do. The cause of splint is the 

 formation of a tumour under the j^riasteum, or mem- 

 brane which covers the bone. During the growth of 

 the tumour this becomes stretched to an unnatural 

 degree, and causes the animal great pain, owing to the 

 sensitive nature of this covering. It is difficult to con- 

 ceive how splint should appear on the outside of the 

 small bones, except, we suppose, the space between these 

 bones is occupied by mechanism of an important charac- 

 ter. It is much easier to account for their almost 

 exclusive appearance on the inside of the limb, the inner 

 splint bone being situated nearer the central part of the 

 body than the other, and from the nature of its con- 

 nection with the knee it is subject to a greater 



