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t(he best skill of the veterinary practitioner. And this is true not 

 alone of casualties which belong to the class of external and trau- 

 matic cases, but includes as well those of a kind perhaps more nu- 

 merous, which may result in lesions of internal parts, frequently the 

 most serious and obscure of all in their nature and effects. 



The horse is too important a factor in the practical details of 

 human life and fills too large a place in the business and pleasure of 

 the world to justify any indifference to his needs and physical com- 

 fort or neglect in respect to the preservation of his peculiar powers 

 for usefulness. 



The function of locomotion is performed by the action of two 

 principal systems of organs, known in anatomical and physiological 

 terminology as passive and active, the muscles performing the active 

 and the bones the passive portion of the movement. The necessary 

 connection between the co-operating parts of the organism is effected 

 by means of a vital contact by which the muscle is attached to the 

 bone at certain determinate points on the surface of the latter. These 

 points of attachment appear sometimes as an eminence, sometimes a 

 depression, sometimes a border or an angle, or again as a mere rough- 

 ness, but each perfectly fulfilling its purpose ; while the necessary mo- 

 tion is provided for by the formation of the ends of the long bones 

 into the requisite articulations, joints, or hinges. Every motion is 

 the product of the contraction of one or more of the muscles, which, 

 as it acts upon the bony levers, gives rise to a movement of extension 

 or flexion, abduction or adduction, rotation or circumduction. The 

 movement of abduction is that which passes from and that of adduc- 

 tion that which passes toward the median line, or the center of the 

 body. The movement of flexion and extension are too well under- 

 stood to need defining. It is the combination and rapid alternations 

 of these movements which produce the different postures and various 

 gaits of the living animal, and it is their interruption and derange- 

 ment, from whatsoever cause, which constitute the pathological con- 

 dition of lameness. 



DEFINITION OF LAMENESS. 



Physiology. Comprehensively and universally considered, 

 then, the term lameness signifies any irregularity or derangement of 

 the function of locomotion, irrespective of the cause which produced 

 it or the degree of its manifestation. However slightly or severely it 

 may be exhibited, it is all the same. The nicest observation may be 

 demanded for its detection, and it may need the most thoroughly 

 trained powers of discernment to identify and locate it, as in some 

 cases where the animal is said to be fainting, tender, or to go sore. On 

 the contrary, the patient may be so far affected as to refuse utterly to 

 use an injured leg, and under compulsory motion keep it raised from 

 the ground, and prefer to travel on three legs rather than to bear any 

 portion of his weight upon the afflicted member. In these two ex- 

 tremes, and in all the intermediate degrees, the patient is simply lame 

 pathognomonic minutiae being considered and settled in a place 

 of their own. 



