800 BONE SPAVIN. 



BONE SPAVIN. 



This is a disease of such common occurrence that almost all 

 horsemen think they fully understand its nature, pathological 

 condition, and treatment. It is generally regarded by veteri- 

 nary authors as a very serious injury, destructive to the utility 

 of the animal, and very frequently reducing his value essentially 

 in consequence of the blemishes. Where, however, there are 

 no outward blemishes, as is the case in four out of every five 

 spavined horses, the price of the animal is not affected, unless 

 he is lame, since the disease is not discovered. There are, at 

 this day, thousands of spavined horses traveling our roads, in 

 not one of whom w^ould the most experienced horsemen the 

 world ever produced be able to determine the fact so long as 

 the animal lives. In all such cases no external enlargement is 

 found, but, on the contrary, the limb is clean and smooth. In 

 the absence of enlargement, or spavin-bunch, as it is sometimes 

 called, on the inside of the hock-joint, horsemen are unwilling 

 to believe that spavin exists. The books, indeed, teach us to 

 look there, and there only, for it; but the author's experience 

 teaches him that the enlargement, where any exists, appears 

 almost as often upon the front part of the hock as it does upon 

 the inside. 



Spavin generally arises from a strain, jar, or blow upon the 

 hock-joint, causing an inflammatory condition of the cartilagi- 

 nous cushions which cover the articular surfaces, or points of 

 union, of each bone, or of the ligaments which surround the 

 joints and bind the bones together ; sometimes, indeed, both 

 are involved. As this inflammatory condition is the exciting 

 cause, spavin, or ulceration of the parts, speedily follows the 



