310 HIND LIMBS MOST SUBJECT TO FARCY. 



all common localities for farcy. Why is this 1 Is it that the con- 

 tagious or miasmatic effluvia gain admission through the pores of 

 the skin in these places, and produce in them, in this direct man- 

 ner, a local disease ] — or is it a mere incidental circumstance, one 

 referrible, not to the thinness of the skin, but owing to such places 

 being coursed by the principal trunks and major number of the 

 lymphatic vessels ] Without taking on myself to refuse all be- 

 lief in the possibility of contagion or miasm affecting the lymphatics 

 through a thin hairless cutis, or to its entering into their canals 

 through the pores of the latter, I must say that the impression on 

 my mind is strongly in favour, as in the case of glanders, of con- 

 stitutional taint, in the generality of cases prior to the local erup- 

 tion ; in all, very shortly aftervi^ards. Still, I repeat, I would not 

 go so far as to deny that farcy, as well as glanders, might, in some 

 cases where contagion or miasm had been operative, be for a time, 

 longer or shorter, according to circumstances, simply a local dis- 

 ease. 



Coleman assigned as a reason for the hind limbs being the 

 especial seat of farcy, their distance from the central force of cir- 

 culation. The more remote a part is from the heart, the more it is 

 under the influence of causes extrinsic to the body ; and so far 

 this reason is valid. In my opinion, however, there is yet another 

 reason to be given ; and that is, the work the hind limbs have to 

 perform in progression compared with what the fore, or any other 

 parts of the body, have to do. This is found to have considerable 

 influence in lameness; and every veterinarian knows that the hind 

 limb is at all times more ready to take on inflammatory action — be- 

 come '' humoury" — than the fore limb ; which does not seem al- 

 together well to tally with its comparative remoteness from the 

 centre of circulation, or, at least, to depend upon that cause alone. 



Other Parts than those that have been named become the 

 occasional seat of farcy. The eyelids, the ears even, sometimes 

 shew the disease. In stone-horses, we are told by continental vete- 

 rinarians, it is by no means uncommon to find the spermatic cord 

 and testicle affected with farcy. Of our own experience we can 

 allege that the mamma is occasionally so ; the disease, when it is 

 so, commonly extending into it from the thigh. In conclusion, we 



