NAVICULARTHRITIS. 149 



fall dead lame : examination of the limb is immediately instituted; 

 nothing is found in the foot or elsewhere to account for the lame- 

 ness, and the case at length turns out to have been from the first 

 navicularthritisj or at least such lesion as is certain to lead thereto. 

 This, it is true, may be regarded as an incidental occurrence. A 

 tolerably certain way, however, of producing the disease would be 

 to take a horse with a foot predisposed to it, and especially with 

 one susceptible of it from having had the disease before, and give 

 him a rattling trot or gallop upon a hard road, or take him for a 

 day's hunting, and over such a country as Surrey, where flints 

 meet his foot at every step. 



In cavalry regiments, where the work of the horses is at times and 

 seasons onl}^ such as can be called hard or trying, and that mostly 

 during the summer, lengthened and accurate observation has shewn 

 that cases of foot-lameness are more prevalent during such work- 

 ing periods and seasons, and most of all prevalent in months when 

 the ground upon which they exercise may be expected to be dry 

 and hard. Looking back a period of eighteen years in my own 

 regiment, I find recorded in the time 239 cases of "lameness in 

 the foot," supposed to be navicularthritic. Dividing this period 

 of eighteen years into two of nine each, I find but 71 of such 

 cases occurred during the first half period ; 168 occurring in the 

 course of the second : a circumstance to me accountable for on 

 the score of there having been a smaller remount of horses in the 

 former, as well as of the regiment having performed not only a less 

 amount of work during the time, but that work consisting in slower 

 and more regulated paces. Furthermore, distributing the whole 

 number of cases — 239 — under the heads of the several months of 

 the respective years in which they occurred, I find a very large 

 proportion happening during the working months ; there being as 

 many cases registered, on an average, during March, May, June, 

 and July, as during the remaining eight months altogether. Some 

 trifling diminution has appeared in the month of April, perhaps 

 owing to the general showeriness and consequent wetness of the 

 ground in that month. The prevalence in March has evidently 

 owed its rise to the relapses — cases patched-up during the winter — 

 giving way again in the spring, as soon as work came to be renewed. 



