6 LAMENESS. 



after having gone awhile and waxed warm, will become sound ; 

 another will commence his work going sound, and at the end of it 

 prove decidedly lame. 



Again, it is not a very uncommon thing for a horse — in par- 

 ticular for a young horse — to manifest a gait resembhng lameness 

 whenever he happens to be put out of his ordinary or natural way 

 of going. In my army practice I have had several instances of 

 young horses having been brought to me for shewing lameness 

 in the longe, who on being run in hand in a straight line have 

 evinced nothing like lameness, — demonstrating, that what was taken 

 for lameness was a peculiar gait produced by the muscles, of one 

 limb in particular, being called on to perform actions for which 

 they had been uneducated, but which gait, as the muscles gained 

 aptitude for such motions, would gradually disappear. 



After this, no one ought to wonder that, on occasions, the best 

 judges may differ in opinion concerning even the prese7Lce of lame- 

 ness, to say nothing about the seat and cause of it. So various are 

 the degrees of intensity in which lameness may shew itself — so 

 faint the line of demarcation to be drawn between lameness and 

 soundness, what one person declares to be but stiffness or tenderness, 

 another affirming to be lameness, while a third contends that the 

 animal is sound — so indefinite, be it repeated, does all this render 

 the presence of lameness in certain cases, that for every examiner 

 of the horse in question to come to the same conclusion is hardly 

 possible. One or other of the circumstances stated, it is that com- 

 monly proves the occasion of so much professional counter-allegation 

 and counter- swearing in horse causes, in courts of justice ; the legal 

 gentlemen and others wondering how veterinary surgeons can so 

 strangely on matter-of-fact points hold contrary opinions : if, how- 

 ever, these learned characters would but reflect on the fluctuating 

 and transitory nature of all vital properties, how Nature in her 

 vital operations at one minute ebbs, at another flows, and that 

 neither man nor beast, nor any other living creature, is the same 

 to-day he was yesterday, they would be more sparing in their de- 

 nunciations of those who, for some such reasons as have been de- 

 tailed, conscientiously too often find reason to disagree in opinion 

 on cases of lameness, one with another. 



The Signs or Indications of Lameness are of two kinds:— 



