BONE SPAVIN. 97 



BONE SPAVIN. 



Seeing as many horses as we do in daily use 

 showing spavins, we might be led to imagine that 

 they are not of as serious consequence as they are. 

 Their consequence, so far as laming the animal is 

 concerned, depends of course greatly on their 

 nature, and equally so on their situation on the 

 limb. We must not, therefore, take the size of 

 its appearance, as any sure criterion whereby to 

 judge of how far it is likely to produce either 

 pain or lameness, for it will at once strike the 

 reader that an excrescence on or in the neigh- 

 bourhood of a joint may be very unsightly and 

 serious in appearance, yet if it is so situated as 

 not to interfere with the motion of that joint, 

 would cause very little inconvenience to the ani- 

 mal; whereas any ossification, however small it 

 may be, if so placed as to interfere with the 

 necessary action of any of the machinery forming 

 the joint, or with the junction or unity of action 

 of two bones, must as necessarily impede, par- 

 tially or totally stop, their action as would an 

 impediment placed in the machinery of a mill, or 

 any engine whose efficacy depends on the corres- 

 ponding working of component parts. 



There is one cause of spavin, and perhaps the 

 very worst of its kind, arising from a circum- 

 stance that, in one respect, shows the machinery of 

 H 



