DISEASES OF HORSES 209 



This last condition of disabled function lameness on three legs 

 and many of the lower degrees of simple lameness are very easy of. 

 detection, but the first, or mere tenderness or soreness, may be very 

 difficult to identify, and at times very serious results have followed 

 from the obscurity which has enveloped the early stages of the mal- 

 ady. For it may easily occur that in the absence of the treatment 

 which an early correct diagnosis would have indicated, an insidious 

 ailment may so take advantage of the lapse of time as to root itself 

 too deeply into the economy to be subverted, and become transformed 

 into a disabling chronic case, or possibly one that is incurable and 

 fatal. Hence the impolicy of depreciating early symptoms because 

 they are unaccompanied by distinct and pronounced characteristics, 

 and from a lack of threatening appearances inferring the absence of 

 danger. The possibilities of an ambush can never be safely ignored. 

 An extra caution costs nothing, even if wasted. The fulfillment of 

 the first duty of a practitioner, when introduced to a case, is not 

 always an easy task, though it is too frequently expected that the 

 diagnosis, or what is the matter verdict, will be reached by the quick- 

 est and surest kind of an instantaneous process and a sure prognosis, 

 or how it will end, guessed at instanter. 



. Usually the discovery that the animal is becoming lame is com- 

 paratively an easy matter to a careful observer. Such a person will 

 readily note the changes of movement which will have taken place 

 in the animal he has been accustomed to drive or ride, unless they 

 are indeed slight and limited to the last degree. But what is not 

 always easy is the detection, after discovering the fact of an existing 

 irregularity, of the locality of its point of origin, and whether its 

 seat be in the near or off leg, or in the fore or the hind part of the 

 body. These are questions too often wrongly answered, notwith- 

 standing the fact that with a little careful scrutiny the point may be 

 easily settled. The error, which is too often committed, of pronounc- 

 ing the leg upon which the animal travels soundly as the seat of the 

 lameness, is the result of a misinterpretation of the physiology of 

 locomotion in the crippled animal. Much depends upon the gait 

 with which the animal moves while under examination. The act of 

 walking is unfavorable for accurate observation, though, if the ani- 

 mal walks on three legs, the decision is easy to reach. The action of 

 galloping will often, by the rapidity of the muscular movements and 

 their quick succession, interfere with a nice study of their rhythm, 

 and it is only under some peculiar circumstances that the examina- 

 tion can be safely conducted while the animal is moving with that 

 gait. It is while the animal is trotting that the investigation is made 

 with the best chances of an intelligent decision, and it is while mov- 

 ing with that gait, therefore, that the points should be looked for 

 which must form the elements of the diagnosis. 



Our first consideration should be the physiology of normal or 

 healthy locomotion, that from thence we may the more easily reach 

 our conclusions touching lameness, or that which is abnormal, and 

 by this process we ought to succeed in obtaining a clew to the solution 

 of the first problem, to wit, in which leg is the seat of the lameness? 



