372 RUPTURE OF MUSCULAR FIBRE. 



Muscle or flesh, I need not tell my reader, is the tissue in an animal 

 body through which, by some incomprehensible vis movendi it 

 derives from vitalization, all the motions of the body are performed ; 

 its more obvious function being that of locomotion, or, in other 

 words, enabling the animal to move from place to place. Nobody 

 could possibly imagine, from seeing flesh hanging up in a butcher's 

 shop, how wonderfully vitalization alters its properties. While the 

 fleshy fibre out of the body will rend or break with but compara- 

 tively little force or weight applied to it, the muscle or living fibre 

 is capable of resisting force or weight to an enormous amount. 

 It is not so much the amount of force or weight applied as the 

 suddenness of its application, which, in the living body, is apt to be 

 followed by rupture or rend of muscular fibre. A man feeling 

 conscious in his own mind of any act he is about or likely to per- 

 form, prepares his will and his muscles accordingly ; and so, 

 though the feat be great and trying, it rarely happens, unless 

 through some unforeseen occurrence, that harm results. Now and 

 then, however, it occurs that the mind and the muscles are taken 

 by surprise, and then accident is very likely to follow ; as when a 

 person, in descending a strange staircase in the dark, chances, un- 

 expectedly, to step down two stairs at once when he had prepared 

 himself only for descent equal to one. But a horse must be a 

 great deal more subject to such like untoward events than a man. 

 How often must he have to perform what he little anticipated he 

 was going to do ! — how frequently must he be forced or see occasion 

 to be obliged to perform so much more or so much less than he 

 had reckoned on, and more especially while in active pursuit in 

 hunting or steeple-chasing ! — and therefore we have a right to 

 suppose that muscular lesion is a less uncommon cause of lameness 

 than we are in the habit, in our practice, of providing for or seek- 

 ing after. Because we cannot demonstrate to sight or feel the 

 laceration or rupture that has taken place, we are apt to fancy or 

 frame some other cause for the lameness ; and the horse, through 

 being laid up, in time recovers, and we, continuing in the belief 

 that our supposition was correct, are left uninformed of the true 

 cause of the lameness, notwithstanding the horse has got sound 

 again. 



