PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS OF FEET. 821 



The foot was mangled, and shod with a bar-shoe and interven- 

 ing leather sole, all combining to augment and perpetuate the pain- 

 ful condition of the animal. The limb of the afflicted foot was kept 

 as much as possible flexed, obviously so at the knee, and the foot 

 reposed upon the front of the hoof not the natural bearing-surface, 

 but the anterior surface of the wall tilted over. The knee was 

 swollen to twice its natural size. 



After the lapse of a few days, with persistence of pain and all 

 the urgent symptoms unabated, the parties who left the horse were 

 advised that an unfavorable issue of the case was prognosticated. I 



FIG. 726. 



had formed the opinion that either the coffin or navicular-bone was 

 fractured, yet nothing could be made out to enable one to deter- 

 mine the fact positively. Difficulty was encountered in discovering 

 the real owner of the horse, and it was not until twenty-nine days 

 had elapsed that consent was obtained to have it destroyed. Time 

 and care being taken for the maceration of the parts, so that dis- 

 section could be proceeded with, the ultimate revelations were the 

 state of the two bones represented. The case is remarkable, for 

 the presence of at least one phenomenon I have in no other instance 

 met with, that is, fracture of the navicular-bone without the appear- 

 ance of any antecedent excavation of its substance by ulceration . 

 There were other more remarkable appearances, but which could 

 not be kept for exhibition, and could only be observed by the eye 

 and touch of the dissector; the fractured bone was held together by 

 its investing ligamentous textures, and I could feel the bone yield 



