279 



of the sensibility— all these investigations may guide the surgeon to a 

 correct localization of the seat of trouble, but he must carefully refrain 

 from the adoption of a hasty conclusion, and above all, assure himself 

 that he has not fiiiled to make the foot, of all the organs of the horse the 

 most liable to injury and lesion, the subject of the most thorough and 

 minute examination of all the parts which compose the suffering ex- 

 tremity. 



The greater liability of the foot than of any other part of the ex- 

 tremities to injury from casualties, natural to its situation and nse, 

 should always suggest (he beginning of an inquiry, especially in an ob- 

 scure case of lameness at that point. Indeed the lameness may have 

 an apparent location elsewhere, when that is the true seat of the trouble, 

 and the surgeon who, while examining his lame patient, discovers a 

 ringbone, and satisfying himself that he has encountered the cause of 

 the disordered action suspends his investigation without subjecting the 

 foot to a close scrutiny, may deeply regret his neglect and inadvertence 

 at a later day, when regrets will avail nothing towards remedying the 

 irreparable injury which has ensued upon his partial method of explora- 

 tion. But, as in human pathological experience, there are instances 

 when inscrutable diseases will deliver their fatal messages, while leaving 

 no mark and making no sign by which they might be identified and 

 classified, so it will happen that in the humbler animals the onset and 

 progress of mysterious and unrecognizable ailments will at times baffle 

 the best veterinarian skill, and leave our burden-bearing servants to 

 succumb to the inevitable, and suffer and perish in unrelieved distress. 



DISEASES OF BONES. 



PERIOSTITIS— OSTITIS — EXOSTOSIS. 



From the closeness and intimacy of the connection existing between 

 the two principal elements of the bony structure while in health, it fre- 

 quently becomes exceedingly difficult, when a state of disease has super- 

 vened, to discriminate accurately as to the part primarily affected, 

 and to determine positively whether the periosteum or the body of tbe 

 bone is originally implicated. Yet a knowledge of the fact is often of 

 the first importance, in order to secure a favorable result from the 

 treatment to be instituted. It is, however, quite evident that in a 

 majority of instances the bony growths which so frequently appear on 

 the surface of their structure, to which the general term of exostosis is 

 applied, have had their origin in an inflammation of the periosteum, or 

 enveloping membrane, and known as penostitis. However this may be 

 we have as a frequent result, sometimes on the length of the bone, 

 sometimes at the extremities, and sometimes involving the articulation 

 itself, certain bony growths, or exostoses, known otherwise by the 

 term sjyllntj ringbone and .sj)ari/i, all of which, in an important sense, 

 may be finally referred to the periosteum as their nutrient source and 



