THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 201 



" We need give no description of the action or peculiar gait of a 

 horse said to have springhalt : the greatest novice easily detects 

 it, and seldom fails to make objections to purchase an animal 

 thus affected. Mr. Feron, one of the few writers who have no- 

 ticed springhalt, says, ' I am convinced, however, by long experi- 

 ence and observation, that springhalt, as it is called, is no disease, 

 therefore can require no remedy.' And in another place, ' In- 

 deed, in Spain, France, and Germany, it is esteemed extremely 

 graceful in their riding schools, or manege, 'particularly when 

 there is a springhalt in both hind legs.' This writer has, however, 

 admitted it to be a disease, to the full scope of the word, in the 

 very outset of his description, by defining it to be ' an involuntary 

 convulsive motion of the muscles, which extend or bend the 

 hock.' In some particulars, springhalt bears some affinity to 

 what in human medicine is called chorea. We do not mean, 

 however, to assert that they are essentially the same disease ; 

 much less do we imagine that a similar mode of treatment could 

 have any good effect ; all we wish to infer by such an analogy is, 

 that they are both spasmodic or convulsive diseases, in which the 

 will has lost more or less of its control over certain voluntary 

 muscles. !Not unfrequently, when the animal has lifted his hind 

 leg from the ground, which is always done with a convulsive 

 twitch, the fetlock nearly approaches the belly, and, by some 

 other remarkable irregularities in its action, before the foot can 

 be replaced upon the ground, (which it seldom is in the most 

 advantageous position,) displays such unnatural movements as to 

 convince us that volition has but little power over it during its 

 suspension. Sometimes this irregular action is confined to one 

 leg, but we believe that it is more commonly seen in both. It is 

 seldom or never removed. 



" Such writers as offer any opinion of its nature suppose it to 

 be a muscular affection, mistaking, we conceive, the effect for the 

 cause. We choose rather to refer its seat to the spinal marrow, 

 or to the nervous trunks passing between it and the affected 

 muscles ; an opinion we were first led to adopt, from having ob- 

 served a broken-backed horse exhibit all the characteristic signs 

 of springhalt, which in this case was clearly only an accompany- 

 ing symptom of the former disease. It was stated in the fore- 



