DEFINITION OF LAMENESS. 279 



follow as our review is carried forward to completion. What we 

 have said touching these elementary truths will probably be sufficient 

 to facilitate -a clear understanding of the requirements essential to 

 the perfection and regularity which characterize the normal perform- 

 ance of the various movements which result in the accomplishment of 

 the action of locomotion. So long as the bones, the muscles and their 

 tendons, the joints with their cartilages, their ligaments and their 

 synovial structure, the nerves and the controlling influences which 

 they exercise over all, with the blood vessels which distribute to every 

 part, however minute, the vitalizing fluid which sustains the whole 

 fabric in being and activity — so long as these various constituents and 

 adjuncts of animal life preserve their normal exemption from disease, 

 traumatism, and pathological change, the function of locomotion will 

 continue to be performed with perfection and efficiency. 



But on the other hand, let any element of disease become implanted 

 in one or several of the parts destined for combined action, any change 

 or irregularity of form, dimensions, location, or action occur in any 

 portion of the apparatus — any obstruction or misdirection of vital 

 power take place, any interference with the order of the phenomena 

 of normal nature, any loss of harmony and lack of balance be be- 

 trayed — and we have in the result the condition of lameness. 



DEFINITION OF LAMENESS. 



Physiology. — Comprehensively and universally considered, then, 

 the term lameness signifies any irregularity or derangement of the 

 function of locomotion, irrespective of the cause which produced it or 

 the degree of its manifestation. However slightly or severely it may 

 be exhibited, it is all the same. The nicest observation may be 

 demandB,d for its detection, and it may need the most thoroughly 

 trained powers of discernment to identify and locate it, as in cases 

 where the animal is said to be fainting, tender, or to go sore. On the 

 contrary, the patient may be so far affected as to refuse utterly to use 

 an injured leg, and under compulsory motion keep it raised from the 

 ground, and prefer to travel on three legs rather than to bear any por- 

 tion of his weight upon the afflicted member. In these two extremes, 

 and in all the intermediate degrees, the patient is simply lame — • 

 pathognomonic minutiae being considered and settled in a place of 

 their own. 



This last condition of disabled function — lameness on three legs — ■ 



and many of the lower degrees of simple lameness are very easy of 



detection, but the first, or mere tenderness or soreness, may be very 



difficult to identify, and at times very serious results have followed 



from the obscurity which has enveloped the early stages of the malady. 



For it may easily occur that in the absence of the treatment which an 



earlv correct diagnosis .would have indicated, an insidious ailment 

 •^ ^ Digitized by Microsoft® 



