WINDGALL. 270 



the especial subject of bursal or articular swelling ; and it is rare, 

 when such swellings have once become developed, particularly 

 bog spavins, for him to get rid of them. They remain as evidence 

 of his having been " put to work too early," and are apt to operate 

 on the public mind to the depreciation of his value. 



The Causes of WindGALLS, then, may be set down to be, in 

 general, such as come under the denomination of " hard work." 

 The stretch, the strain, the sudden shock, the continual squeezing 

 and rubbing, the bursse of such joints as the fetlock and hock are 

 subject to; the stretch and occasional laceration the faschiae 

 bracing and supporting the bursse experience ; the strains and con- 

 torsions to which joints are so obnoxious — all these, to say nothing 

 about incidental injuries, such as falls, blows. Sec, must be reckon- 

 ed as so many causes, direct or indirect, of vvindgall. At the same 

 time it must be borne in mind that in particular forms of disease — 

 to be hereafter specially considered — particular causes will be 

 found operative. Other causes are mentioned. Hurtrel d'Arboval 

 says, that continued exposure to cold and moisture, in marshy 

 pastures, will produce windgalls; and he is strongly in favour of 

 the old notion, that they are also caused by the steeply inclined 

 pavements in stables upon which horses, for the sake of appear- 

 ance, by dealers more especially, are kept for hours together forcibly 

 standing by having their heads racked up. 



The Pathology of Windgall has already, from some obser- 

 vations we have had occasion to make, received considerable eluci- 

 dation. In its first formation and simplest form, windgall consists 

 in nothing more than distention of the bursa through an inordinate 

 quantity of its natural secretion. The bursa itself retains its nor- 

 mal structure; nor is the augmented secretion any thing more than 

 the same straw-coloured synovial fluid found in the cavity in a 

 state of health. That this inordinate secretion is due to inflam- 

 mation of the bursa, as is usually asserted to be the case, is to us 

 extremely doubtful. For our own parts, we should rather say that, 

 generally speaking, inflammation, properly so called, has nothing 

 to do with it. In our opinion, there is increased activity in the 

 capillary system of the bursa — that sort of hypertrophic action 

 which produces inordinate nutrition and secretion ; under the in- 



