142 NAVICULARTHRITIS. 



thritis, nor of the formidable and but too frequently — when be- 

 come chronic — hopeless nature of such a disease ; hence his con- 

 cluding regret, " if I had understood, completely, facts heretofore 

 stated many years ago, I should have saved myself much dis- 

 appointment and my employers much expense!" Lateral con- 

 traction of the hoof, then, may be taken so far in connexion with 

 navicularthritis that it will now and then be found to supervene 

 upon that disease, though never, as a cause, to forerun it : a result 

 we might feel disposed to look for much oftener than it occurs, 

 from the circumstance, I before mentioned, of the horse favouring 

 and reposing, on every occasion he can, his contracted and lame 

 foot. In being consulted, therefore, on contraction, we shall, with 

 Moorcroft, be led to inquire, from history, present symptoms, and 

 other circumstances, whether the case before us be one of 'pure 

 contraction, or one of contraction the sequel of navicularthritis. 



The time is now come for us to examine into a fact too noto- 

 rious among veterinarians of a certain standing in the profession 

 to be questioned, and which the account I have given of the lame 

 patients I found at the Veterinary College, during my pupillage 

 in 1809, tends to confirm, viz. that in former days contraction ap- 

 peared as the ordinary or prevalent cause of foot- lameness; where- 

 as, now-a-days, all or nearly all foot-lameness is set down to 

 the account of navicularthritis. It is probable that in both these 

 opinions error has played its part, there being a fashion and a fond- 

 ness for novelty in medicine as in other matters : still, the broad 

 fact is undeniable, that contraction is, as it were, gone out of our 

 sick register to make room for navicularthritis, and it becomes 

 mv duty to afford some explanation of the apparently strange 

 metastasis. 



It will hardly be necessary to remind such of my readers as are 

 old enough to have heard our late distinguished Professor's ex- 

 cellent lectures on the foot of the horse, that that was a part he 

 made his peculiar study, bringing to the task acknowledged talent, 

 and having a field of observation before him, in his army practice 

 and college practice, to test and work his theories upon, of no less 

 ample dimensions than established character. Coleman found the 

 horses of the cavalry — as indeed were the horses of the commu- 

 nity at large in those days— shod with thick-heeled clumsy shoes, 



