SYMPTOMS OF NAVICULARTHRITIS. 153 



with the unpleasant impression upon his mind, examines the sus- 

 pected leg and foot,— perhaps has the shoe taken off. Not making 

 discovery, however, of any thing amiss, he begins to console him- 

 self that his apprehensions were but imaginary ; and, finding his 

 servant the next morning in his wonted state of soundness, feels 

 persuaded that the affair altogether was but a phantasm; his 

 " wish," no doubt, being " father to the thought." 



The next journey or rapid work the horse performs brings back 

 the lameness, and now it assumes more the form of reality, and 

 does not pass off so quickly again. Still, give the horse rest, so 

 that he can repose his lame foot, and the lameness is likely to 

 vanish a second time ; or, at all events, to become so much dimi- 

 nished that little or no heed is taken of the little ** favouring" that 

 remains, supposing it does not altogether escape observation. In 

 this way I have known, even under ordinary carefulness, days 

 pass away before the horse was thought to be really ailing : under 

 other circumstances, weeks may elapse ; nay, when heedlessness 

 or indifference prevails, months may run on before the lameness 

 is regarded as " bad enough" to lay the horse up. 



In the end, when work is persevered with, the lameness, al- 

 though at first but slight and transient, cannot fail to become un- 

 remitting and severe ; and it is very possible, as I have already 

 shewn, that it may be so from the very beginning. In either case 

 the horse, we will say, finds his way to a veterinary surgeon ; and 

 his examination elicits such proofs of the existence of navicular- 

 thritis as I shall now particularise. 



The Gait of the lame Horse is to the experienced veteri- 

 narian demonstrable that the lameness is not in the shoulder. I do 

 not mean to say it is quite impossible to mistake, by the gait, 

 shoulder for foot lameness, and vice versa ; but I contend that, to 

 the man of observation and experience, it is but rarely that any 

 doubt in such respect will present itself; and that when it does, 

 such doubt is commonly resolvable by tests beyond those of simply 

 running the horse forward and back again : what these tests are 

 will come under consideration when we are on the subject of 

 shoulder lameness. But there is a gait likewise which, though 

 not peculiar to navicularthritis, tends very much to confirm our 



VOL. IV. X 



