276 WINDGALL. 



stood as meant to apply to bursal tumours of every description, be 

 their situation where or their nature what it may. 



The Origin of Windgall will be more likely to be satisfac- 

 torily elicited through an inquiry into the functions the bursas in a 

 state of health are intended to answer in the animal economy, and 

 the mode in which these functions are carried out in the economy 

 of the horse in particular, than by any other course we can pursue. 

 The bursas are contrivances of Nature to facilitate the sliding of 

 tendons and muscles, and even of the skin, over bones or other 

 tendons, ligaments or cartilages, or any projecting parts. By 

 preventing too close approximation, and consequent friction, they 

 not only protect the parts between which they are interposed 

 against any irritation that friction might create, but by removing 

 the slightest impediment to it, they facilitate movement, and thus 

 become aids to locomotion. And although but passive aids, still 

 may the bursae be regarded as parts suffering abuse from any excess 

 of action, whether such excess consist in intensity of force or of 

 frequency. Such excess of locomotion as goes by the name of 

 *' work" or " sprain," we find to be very commonly succeeded 

 by the appearance of windgall, either in the form of what is 

 usually so called, or in that of hog spavin, thorough-pin, &c. So 

 connected are the two, as cause and effect, that whenever a horse 

 presents himself exhibiting windgalls, we at once pronounce him 

 to have " done work," or to have been " sprained." And yet, 

 by no means infrequently are brought before us young horses — 

 horses that have never been broken or backed even — having 

 bursal swellings, not so much in their fetlocks as in their hocks : 

 bog spavins being any thing but rare occurrences among them. 

 And these have manifestly arisen in the absence either of work or 

 of sprain. 



In the young Horse bursal swellings are frequently said to 

 arise from " weakness." The interpretation of which appears to 

 be, that the joints — with which the bursae are so generally con- 

 nected, and with which in some parts they make common cavi- 

 ties, are in many a growing animal really physically too " weak" 

 even to support the weight of its body ; and the consequence 

 is, they bulge, i. e. the capsular ligament becomes distended and 



