234 SHOULDER LAMENESS. 



been some connecting pathological link between it and the attack 

 of influenza. One reason for so thinking was, that the influenzal 

 attack happened in July, the lameness in August; another, that 

 the influenza of that year had shewn a remarkable predisposition, 

 consequent upon it, to such translations ; though against this 

 opinion militated the absence of bursal swelling outside the af- 

 fected joints, and of any deposit inside. After all, the case is 

 not stripped altogether of its mystic vestment. Nevertheless, it 

 is likely to prove so far useful to us, that, should we ever meet 

 with a similar one, although we may be equally at a loss for a 

 remedy for it, we may at least be in a situation to offer some sa- 

 tisfactory diagnosis of its nature. 



SHOULDER LAMENESS. 



As the " round bone" or hip-joint has frequently had disease or 

 derangement attributed to it in lamenesses of the hind limb when 

 all the while the seat of ailment has been the hock, so the shoulder, 

 over and over again, has been imagined to have suffered " wrench," 

 or laceration, or injury of some sort, when all the time the seat of 

 lameness has been the foot. At the time and by the persons such 

 mistakes used to be made the different sites and kinds of lameness 

 were not so well understood as they are by veterinary surgeons of 

 the present day; and since both the hip and shoulder-joints are parts 

 removed at some distances from the surface of the body, and are 

 both of them pretty thickly clothed with muscle, disease might 

 exist in either without there being any external signs of its pre- 

 sence, or be imputed to either when it did not exist without much 

 apprehension of error being detected, seeing that no very obvious 

 signs of any cause for lameness were to be found elsewhere. Action 

 is our great guide in directing our attention to the shoulder as the 

 seat of lameness; and though, as far as this goes, we may not 

 have improved any very great deal since the time of Solley- 

 sell, still has so much light been thrown upon lameness in other 

 parts, that, finding additional causes for it, we are less often in 

 doubt concerning it, and consequently less likely to impute it to 

 quarters in which its existence is by external signs indemonstra- 



