170 NAVICULARTHRITIS. 



any thing but a rare circumstance for an unfortunate wight of a 

 horss to be led to the slaughter-house on the very account of his 

 grogginess. 



That the disease at its outset, in its most active form, consists 

 in inflammation, we possess every evidence we can have to shew, 

 considering the buried situation of the navicular bursa, and con- 

 sidering that the inflammation itself, at its highest, is no more than 

 what we should, comparing it with other inflammations, denominate 

 sub-acute. Exceptions, however, must be made of such cases as 

 occur on a sudden — where the horse, perfectly sound the moment 

 before, and never lame at any antecedent period, falls lame in an 

 instant; for in such cases inflammation has had no time to set 

 in, to occasion the lameness; though it speedily supervenes in the 

 injured tissues, and, subequently, itself becomes, if not the sole, 

 a highly aggravated cause of the lameness. The probability is — 

 for we can only through some mere accidental occurrence put it to 

 the proof — that lameness occurring thus suddenly proceeds from 

 lesion or actual breach of the synovial membrane of the navicu- 

 lar bursa, and that either the crest upon the navicular bone, or the 

 depression in the tendon opposite to it, is the seat of such lesion. 

 At the same time it is to be presumed, that such injury — what- 

 ever it may be — is intense of its kind, from the fact of its producing 

 at once a limping lameness. 



A case related by the late Mr. Henderson, of Edinburgh, in the 

 second volume of The VETERINARIAN, will be found to furnish 

 us with some light hereupon. The horse had been lame from 

 ossific inflammation of the cartilage of his left fore foot ; but had 

 been restored to soundness, and continued sound for three years, 

 when he fell lame again in the same foot. This time, however, 

 remedies which had before proved successful, failed ; and Mr. H. 

 had come to the conclusion that his case was navicular, and that, 

 therefore, his condition was hopeless ; on hearing which opinion the 

 owner took him and drove him seventeen miles in a carriage, the 

 consequence of which was an attack of acute founder (laminitis) 

 of which, on the sixth day, he died. Upon the inferior surface 

 of the navicular bone, in its centre, was discovered " a dark red 

 spot," and ** very small spiculae of bone were beginning to shoot 



