232 ELBOW-JOINT LAMENESS. 



he shewed lameness in both fore legs, and particularly when he 

 became, as he had latterly become, quite a cripple, he manifested 

 a remarkable crouching sort of action, dreading almost to move his 

 fore limbs forward, and manifesting such exquisite soreness and 

 pain when compelled to move on, that, while he was making as 

 short steps as he could, he was doing his utmost to keep his body 

 back and advance his hind limbs to receive its weight, to prevent 

 any of it, or as little as possible, falling upon his fore limbs. In 

 short, his posture and gait altogether were very like that of acute 

 founder ; so like indeed, that, perhaps, one might not be able to 

 make a distinction between the two diseases, were it not that in 

 founder the feet would shew the nature of the disease; and that in 

 elbow-joint disease, although the animal manifested all this pain 

 and dread of stepping, yet, when the whip was applied, and 

 he found himself obUged to go, did he plainly shew that his fear 

 arose purely from the pain of the moment, and not from any cause 

 of absolute inability to tread ; and, further, that the pain was not 

 evinced at the moment of putting down the foot, as in founder, but 

 at the time when the body was required to be advanced by the 

 hind upon the fore limbs ; at the moment, in fact, that he was called 

 on during action to throw the slightest weight upon the columns of 

 bones, which he no sooner had done than his body shrunk back 

 upon the hind quarters : in fact, it was evidently the effort to 

 throw the weight upon the muscles of the shoulder instead of upon 

 the bony column that occasioned this peculiar crouching gait. 

 And every now and then, while he was being compelled to walk, 

 would he, at the moment the weight came upon his fore limbs, 

 crouch down to that degree, that lookers-on cried out he would 

 "fall;" on no occasion, however, did he fall, but always saved 

 himself by shrugging his body back upon his haunches. Reduced 

 as he was to a state of crippleness to disable him even from walk- 

 ing about to get his own living at pasture, and evidently in exqui- 

 site pain every time he put forward his fore limbs in action, still it 

 was not without both reluctance and regret, that, in the month of 

 March 1845, I came to the resolution to have an end put to suf- 

 ferings which every means we had made trial of had signally 

 failed either to arrest or relieve. 



