DISEASES OF THE BONES. 



69 



CHAPTER in. 



DISEASES OF THE BONES. 



BIG HEAD AND BIG JAW — EXOSTOSIS OF THE BONES. 



This disease has a very pe- 

 culiar histor}^. It is exclusively 

 American. In Europe it ap- 

 pears to be entirely unknown/ 

 The English and French writ- 

 ers upon the horse have* made 

 no mention of it whatever, a 

 circumstance which could 

 hardly have occurred had the 

 disease been known to them, 

 or even to the ancients; and 

 of American authorities, 

 though all must have been 

 well aware of its existence, but 

 few have given it any atten- 

 tion, probably from a want 

 of knowledge of either its 

 history or treatment, or, per- 

 haps, of both. 



It prevails most extensively 

 in the great Valley of the 

 Mississippi — in the States of Tennessee, Arkansas, Missis- 

 sippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. As we recede from the 

 great river and its influences, it gradually diminishes; yet 

 isolated cases may be found throughout the country from 

 the Eastern sea-board to the plains of the far West, and 

 from the vicinity of the Ohio and the Potomac to the Gulf 

 of Mexico. Its ravages appear to have been most of all 

 destructive in Western Tennessee, iN'orthern Mississippi, and 



BIG HEAD. 



