TREATMENT OF NAVICULARTHRITIS. 175 



often to be looked for, even under favouring circumstances, and 

 certainly never to be expected under opposite ones. 2. In adhe- 

 sion, and this would appear to be the most common termination ; 

 and though not the most favourable, still so far from being the most 

 unfavourable that the horse will, in the absence of ulceration in the 

 joint, probably step sound with it, or sufficiently so to continue his 

 ordinary work. 3. In caries, ulceration of the bone, and consequent 

 liability to, if not actual, fracture of it; with or without ulceration 

 of the tendon as well, and in time liability to. if not actual rupture 

 of it likewise ; in either of which disastrous issues of the case 

 nothing remains but the bullet. 



Collateral Disease, no doubt, will on occasions arise out of 

 navicularthritis, though such is by no means so frequent as has 

 been imagined : on the contrary, in the generality of cases, even 

 for years will the disease confine itself to the navicular joint, and, 

 as I said before, not so rarely to the joint of one limb, the fellow 

 fore-foot remaining unaffected. "With regard to ossification of 

 the cartilages of the foot," says Mr. Turner, "and ossification of 

 portions of the ligament of the navicular bone, and other bony ex- 

 crescences within the foot, I have to remark, that, having dissected 

 so many extreme cases of chronic foot lameness of many years' 

 standing, in which I have found all the ravages of the disease 

 limited to a space within the foot not exceeding half-an-inch square, 

 and unaccompanied with the slightest disease of any other part of 

 the internal foot, I am induced to consider them (ossification of the 

 cartilages and ligaments, &c.) as mere effects arising out of the 

 navicular disease ; and more particularly as there are more groggy 

 feet tvithout the slightest ossification of the ligaments of the navi- 

 cular bone than with them." 



Treatment of Navicularthritis. 



There is no description of lameness in horses concerning which 

 unprofessional persons feel themselves so much puzzled as about 

 " navicular disease," as it is called. They cannot understand how 

 a horse's lameness should be " in his foot," while, at the same time, 

 that foot exhibits to their eyes all the outward and visible signs 



