NAME — HISTORY. 133 



ness, saying, — '' When an injury has been sustained in the coffin 

 joint*, happening from violent pitching of the limb on a pointed or 

 hard substance, favouring of the foot occurs before any contraction 



is observable." " Your case has features in it which from your 



statement appear awkward ; and I have put you to the expense of 

 this long letter in order that you may form some opinion whether 

 your horse is lame from pure contraction, or from contraction con- 

 nected with deej)' seated injury of the foot. The information I have 

 endeavoured to convey, you may, perhaps, not thank me for ; how- 

 ever, if I had understood completely the facts heretofore stated 

 many years ago, I should have saved myself much disappointment, 

 and my employers nauch expense." 



A subsequent letter of Moorcroft's — one he addressed, in 1819, 

 to the editor of the " Calcutta Journal," on the occasion of being 

 made acquainted with the "discovery"of neurotomy by Mr. Sewell — 

 will serve as an interpretation to the above extracts from his former 

 letter, and satisfactorily, I think, shew that they had relation to 

 the navicular disease : — 



" With reference to your paper of the 23d inst., noticing, as 

 discovered by Mr. Sewell, within about eighteen months, a cure 

 for lameness in horses, commonly called ^ coffin-joint lameness,' I 

 beg to observe that the mode of treatment alluded to, so far from 

 being a discovery of the last eighteen months, was practised by me 

 about eighteen years ago." — '' For a long time previous to this 

 period it had been fashionable to attribute most lamenesses in the 

 fore limb of the horse (of which causes were not glaringly obvious 

 in alteration from natural form) to some disease in the shoulder;" — 

 and " on dissecting feet affected with these lamenesses the flexor 

 tendon ivas noiv and then observed to have been broken, partially 

 or entirely ; but more commonly to have been bruised and inflamed 

 in its course under the navicular or shuttle bone, or at its insertion 

 into the bone of the foot. Sometimes, although seldom, the navi- 

 cular bone itself has been found to have been fractured ; at others, 

 its surface has been deprived of its usual coating, and studded with 



* In the " coffin" joint, as will be seen hereafter, is included the navicular 

 joint. 



