THE MODERN HOUSE DOCTOR. 407 



(as we may call them) abhorrent states of soundness and un- 

 soundness, it has struck us some good might arise from a di- 

 vision of unsoundness into actual and prospective ; the latter de- 

 nomination indicating a state of transient or trustless soundness. 

 Notwithstanding a horse may be free from lameness, may go 

 sound, yet, so long as he has that about him which will probably 

 or surely render him lame the first time he is put to hard work, 

 he is virtually an unsound horse, in honesty unwarrantable ; and 

 the best denomination we are able to find for such a failable con- 

 dition — a sort of intermediate state between soundness and un- 

 soundness — is prospective unsoundness. So far as abstract ac- 

 tion is concerned, the horse, it is true, must be regarded as 

 sound ; although that which he has upon him, making him liable 

 or certain to become lame whenever he is put to excess of action 

 or work, certainly stands in the way of any warranty of sound- 

 ness being given. 



" Prospective unsoundness, however, although it relieves us from 

 the necessity of doing that which no professional man conscien- 

 tiously can do in very many of the subjects brought before him, 

 viz., of pronouncing the horse either actually sound or unsound, 

 yet unfortunately it opens a door through which crowds of cases, 

 really doubtful in their character or rendered so by the variety 

 of opinions given on them, are ready to be forced in, and made 

 to perplex us in coming to any proper or judicious selection of 

 them. One horse has manifest disease, in some form or another, 

 as the cause of his being pronounced likely or certain to go lame 

 at no very remote period : his case admits of no question. But 

 another horse has — no disease — only a malformation, a defor- 

 mity, or misshapenness, the result of which is weakness of limb, 

 and consequent liability to failure — to lameness, in fact. A 

 third horse has neither disease nor deformity, nothing but a ' bad 

 habit,' and that is said to amount to unsoundness. And it is the 

 cases that come under one or other of these latter denominations 

 — which are the offspring either of natural defect, of use or 

 wear, or of habit — that, for the most part, puzzle veterinary 

 practitioners in coming to judicious decisions on soundness. 



" To elucidate these observations by example : A horse shall 

 have a spavin or a curb, or a swollen or fired back sinew, any 



