WINDGALL. 275 



which now and then supervenes on severe broken knee, another. 

 We have seen the entire surface of the synovial lining of a joint 

 thickly coated with coagulable lymph. And effusion of solid mat- 

 ters is not confined to joints, but, on occasions, happens in bursal 

 and thecal cavities as well. The usual or ordinary form, however, 

 and we may add the simplest form, under which disease of bursa 

 presents itself is that oiwindgall. 



The Name of WindGALL is a remnant of barbarous veterinary 

 nosology. Derived from the words wind and gall, the " corrupt 

 jelly" or black-looking matter which chronic windgalls are now 

 and then found to contain, appears to have been called ** gall," not 

 from any resemblance it was thought to bear to bile, but merely 

 from its rancorous malignant aspect. The old writers on farriery 

 entertained notions, from the puffy fluctuating sensations the 

 tumours upon the legs of horses convey to the feel, that they con- 

 tained, as well as other matters, " wind" ox flatus. By Vegetius, 

 the skin covering the tumour was said to be " inflated after the 

 similitude of a bladder;" and Bracken defined the windgall to be 

 a " windy" or •' flatulent tumour," and thought it arose from " over- 

 stretching the sinewy parts;" and that it was " air which had the 

 most to do in the matter;" although a little farther on the sanie 

 author informs us, that *' windgalls are soft yielding flatulent tu- 

 mours or little bladders yw// of corrupt jelly ." 



The Appellation of 'Windgall' is commonly restricted 

 to the bursal tumours upon the sides of the fetlock joint. Such 

 restriction of its meaning, however, is neither warranted by autho- 

 rity nor supported by pathological investigation. SOLLEYSELL, 

 who defines " the windgall" to be " a soft swelling, caused by a 

 cold, phlegmatic, and serous humour," used the word in a generic 

 sense ; for, although in one place he tells us windgalls " are seated 

 on either side of the fetlock joint," in another he informs us that 

 they " sometimes grow upon both sides of the hock'' And this is 

 the proper sense in which windgall, in our opinion, ought to be 

 understood : a hog spavin and a thorough-pin being, in a medical 

 point of view, quite as true windgalls as the tumours usually so 

 called at the sides of the fetlock joints. Therefore, the observations 

 we are about to make on windgalls we intend should be under- 



