66 SPASMS. 



however, Mr. S. is ready to admit might have been spasmodic in 

 their nature. 



Mr. Stewart, late Andersonian Veterinary Professor, 

 Glasgow, in The Veterinarian for 1836, relates two cases 

 which, in his mind, " establish the fact that horses are liable to 

 cramp." 



Slender as this evidence confessedly is, still, from the profes- 

 sional eminence of the parties by whom it is furnished, it is suffi- 

 cient in my mind to dispel every doubt of the fact of spasm being 

 a disease of the horse, a rare one though it be ; at the same time, 

 one we are on all occasions to hesitate to allow being present, with- 

 out the most unequivocal symptoms in proof of it, combined with 

 the absence of every other disorder which might by possibility 

 produce similar infirmity. Were more than the respectable 

 authorities I have adduced wanting to convince me of the truth of 

 what has been asserted, I have only to cast an eye back upon my 

 own practice. On several occasions, in the course of now nearly 

 thirty years' experience, I have had horses brought to me " dead 

 lame" and suddenly so seized, without being able to ascribe their 

 ailment to any cause save spasm ; an opinion which the rigid con- 

 dition of the limb, and of certain muscles in particular, together 

 with the loss of power and extreme tenderness of them, appeared 

 to confirm. I remember one day riding from Hyde Park to St. 

 James' street, alighting there for a few minutes to make a call, 

 and, on remounting, finding my horse so lame in one fore leg that I 

 could hardly make him drag the limb forward. I instantly dis- 

 mounted, examined the foot and leg, but nothing was to be disco- 

 vered except some seeming rigidity of, and pain on giving motion to, 

 the muscles in front of the shoulder : in fact, it appeared a decided 

 case of spasm of the levator humeri. Not relishing the idea of 

 leading my horse home, especially in the public thoroughfare where 

 I had already become, on account of the limping of my horse, 

 not very enviously conspicuous, I mounted again, and at all ha- 

 zards raised my horse's courage with my spurs, though confessedly 

 rather ashamed of myself for being observed to goad a " poor lame 

 horse." Arriving at the top of St. James' street, I was about 



