WINDGALL. 285 



unless at such times as horses are growing ''stale upon their legs," 

 and then the presence of windgall is frequently made a pretext or 

 necessity for blistering or firing. The windgalls, being the only 

 anormalities discoverable by such persons, are naturally enough 

 regarded as the causes of the " staleness," and as naturally are 

 desired to be removed. It has been shewn, however, both as the 

 result of experience and pathological investigation, that windgalls, 

 of a kind that do not produce lameness, or inconvenience by their 

 magnitude, or offend the sight by their situation or their size, in 

 point of fact require no treatment : to which another reason may be 

 added for letting them alone, and that is, that in general, par- 

 ticularly when they are chronic, they prove exceedingly stubborn 

 and intractable under treatment of every kind. If windgalls are 

 to be treated at all, the earlier after their formation remedies are 

 employed the better the chance of their reduction or removal ; 

 hence it is that in young horses such tumefactions* are frequently 

 entirely got rid of, not more, perhaps, by treatment than by atten- 

 tion to any circumstances or agents to which they may appear to 

 owe their production. Taking such animals off any work that may 

 appear to be too much for their limbs to sustain ; remedying any 

 injurious or mal-position into which their fetlock joints may have 

 been thrown either by shoeing or the improper slant given to the 

 standing of their stalls; preventing kicking in the stall, pawing, &c. ; 

 is all that is frequently required for the cure of such cases as 

 capped hock, capped elbow, tumefied knee, &c. ; these or other 

 causes, if there be any, being removed, we may look forward in 

 young subjects, and in adults sometimes, so long as their windgalls 

 are not become chronic, to more or less spontaneous subsidence 

 of them. Indeed, it frequently happens that, as young animals 

 grow and alter, so their windgalls in part or altogether disappear : 

 whereas in aged horses — in subjects in whom they have " grown 

 with their growth and strengthened with their strength" — it is a for- 

 lorn hope to set about attempting to get rid of them ; for even should 

 any trifling reduction in their volume be effected by medicinal 

 means, there remains great probability of their returning to their 

 former size whenever the animal is put again to the same hard 

 work to which the tumours owed their production. 



* Bog-spavins excepted. 



