16 ON SOUNDNESS. 



PROSPECTIVE unsounduess, however, although it relieves 

 us from the necessity of doing that which no professional 

 man conscientiously can do in very many of the subjects 

 brought before him viz., of pronouncing the horse either 

 actually *sound or unsound yet unfortunately it opens a 

 door through which crowds of cases, really doubtful in 

 their character or rendered so by the variety of opinions 

 given on them, are ready to be forced in, and made to 

 perplex us in coining to any proper or judicious selection of 

 them. One horse has manifest disease, in some form or 

 another, as the cause of his being pronounced likely or cer- 

 tain to go lame at no very remote period ; his case admits 

 of no question. But another horse has no disease, only a 

 malformation, a deformity, or misshapenness, the result of 

 which is weakness of limb and consequent liability to fail- 

 ure to lameness, in fact. A third horse has neither dis- 

 ease nor deformity, nothing but a bad habit, and that is 

 said to amount to unsoundness ; and it is the cases that 

 come under one or other of these latter denominations 

 which are the offspring either of natural defect, of use or 

 wear, or of habit that, for the most part, puzzle veterin- 

 ary practitioners in coming to judicious decisions on sound- 

 ness. 



To elucidate these observations by example : A horse 

 may have a spavin or a curb, or a swollen or fired back 

 sinew any disease, in short, from which, on exertion, he 

 is likely, as our experience tells us, to become lame j such 

 a horse is prospectively unsound. But suppose he have a 

 club foot, a parrot mouth, bent limbs, curved or curly- 

 looking hocks, narrow or flat feet, weak joints, a hip down, 

 etc. all natural deformities or malformations, none of them 

 coming fairly or popularly under the category of disease 

 what is to be done in passing judgment upon them 1 ? The 



