THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 405 



than among others, and the more skilful and respectable the pro- 

 fessional persons are, the greater will be the probability of a 

 happy unison in their views of the case. To lay down any statute 

 law which shall meet such cases as these, is, from the T ~ery nature 

 of vital structures and functions, totally an impossible matter. 



" We ought to be able to establish it as an axiom, although it 

 may prove one not unassailable by argument, that a lame horse 

 is an unsound horse. It might be objected, for example, that a 

 horse having a stone in his foot — than which nothing, for the 

 time, renders a horse more lame — should be regarded as un- 

 sound ; and yet by this rule he must be so considered so long as 

 he continues to go lame, though as sound from the moment that 

 the stone is removed. The shoe ' nailed on too tight' furnishes 

 another similar example. A horse, quite sound, enters a forge 

 to be shod, and comes out going, as grooms call it, ' scrambling,' 

 i. e., lame ; he is, in fact, no longer a sound horse : take him back, 

 however, into the forge, and remove his shoes, nail them on ' easy,' 

 and, if not completely restored to soundness, he is thereby evi- 

 dently so much relieved as to give pretty fair earnest of his be- 

 coming well or as sound as. ever by the next or the following 

 day. It may be said, and we quite agree in the reply, that such 

 trivial points as these are not likely to come before us for de- 

 cision, or to cause us any trouble if they do : still it is right we 

 should be armed on all sides to defend that law which we, as pro- 

 fessional men, deem it wholesome and just to lay down ; viz., that 

 every horse going lame — no matter from what cause — ought 

 to be pronounced unsound. 



" If any real objection can be urged to the institution of such a 

 law, one presents itself in the case of a horse that is lame at one 

 time and sound at another. For instance, a horse shall have a 

 frush, of which he shall flinch or go palpably lame every time 

 he happens to tread upon a stone, or whenever he goes upon 

 hard, uneven surfaces ; though at other times, upon soft ground 

 or upon turf, he shall appear quite sound. This horse, we think, 

 stands, in respect to the question of soundness, altogether in a 

 different position from either the stone-in-the-foot or the tight- 

 shoe case : here is disease — demonstrable disease ; and although 

 it gives rise but occasionally to lameness, sti 1 !, as lameness is at 



