310 



Capped Hock. 



StJCH is the NAME given to any fulness or actual enlargement 

 of the natural cap or point of the hock. French veterinarians call 

 the swelling a capelet, whence our old writers on farriery have 

 derived their word CAPULET, the appellation they have given to 

 capped hock ; though why they have changed the e into an u is 

 not very apparent. 



The Point of the Hock is a part notorious to every horse- 

 man. It is constituted of the tuberosity of the os calcis or hock- 

 bone, and serves as the powerful lever whereby the '* hamstrings" 

 or tendons of the gastrocnemii muscles are enabled to perform so 

 important a part in progression. These two tendons, as they 

 descend along the back of the thigh to the hock, twine round each 

 other in such manner that the outer tendon belongs to the inner 

 muscle, the inner tendon to the outer muscle. The latter is in- 

 serted into the tuberosity, and there terminates ; but the former 

 (or outer tendon) as it approaches the tuberosity, expands and 

 forms a cap for it, and so becomes a very complete bursal struc- 

 ture ; whereby it is enabled, in its subsequent course to the foot, 

 to play over the inserted tendon freely and without friction. This 

 internal or tendinous cap is surmounted by an external, subcuta- 

 neous, faschial cap, which, from its being formed in the midst of an 

 abundant cellular tissue, is, together with the skin covering it, 

 extremely loose and moveable upon the tuberosity. This, the 

 outer cap, differs from the inner one not only in structure and com- 

 pleteness of cavity, but also in its contents ; it being, in fact, 

 naturally, little else than the semblance of a cavity, having no more 

 indications of fluid in it than would arise from the presence of 

 halitus within the cells of its parietes during life. But, 



In a diseased Condition — for this is the usual seat of capped 

 hock — its stdte is different. Augmented secretion is excited, and 

 this condenses into serous fluid, collects, and becomes confined 

 within the cavity now perfected by adhesions cementing together 

 the cells of the surrounding porous tissue ; so that in a very short 

 space of time distention becomes visible around and upon the point 



