60 THE HORSE. 



tain ligaments of the leg or the pastern, or from their 

 sudden inordinate extension ; this latter cause must 

 necessarily have been the operating one, when the 

 horse, as sometimes happens, recovers in a few days' 

 rest, and the ligaments have recovered enough of their 

 former tone. The extreme case is the actual rupture 

 and division of the flexor tendon. Ligamentary strains 

 in the shoulder are very difficult to be distinguished 

 from lameness in the legs and feet. Perhaps, as I 

 have said elsewhere, if a horse in his walk throws 

 out his fore arms freely and with no appearance of 

 stiffness, his shoulders are sound. Strains in the 

 loins arise from heavy weights, sudden accidents, or 

 with draught horses, from compulsion to pull beyond 

 their powers. This malady in its worst state is in- 

 curable, and though the miserable victim may show 

 no defect, he is incapable of labour, and upon exertion, 

 liable to bend down almost instantly as if to sit upon 

 his hinder parts. Such used to be termed megrim 

 horses, from the supposition that the complaint had its 

 seat in the head. There has always subsisted with 

 farriers and grooms, a great difficulty to distinguish 

 and ascertain a shoulder lameness. In the stifle bone 

 upon the thigh bone, which stifle is similar to the small 

 cramp bone in a leg of mutton, this strain, particu- 

 larly in young horses, is sometimes nothing more than 

 a sudden and temporary spasm or cramp of the mus- 

 cles, occasioned by too abrupt and sudden turning- 

 round of the animal, the complaint being liable to oc- 

 cur on a similar occasion ; the consequence a partial 

 dislocation of the patella or pan. The radical injury 

 is from a rupture of the internal lateral ligament of 



