LAMENESS: ITS CAUSES AND TREATMENT. 
By A. Liautarp, M. D., V. M., 
Formerly principal of the American Veterinary College, New York. 
[Revised by John R. Mobler, A. M., V. M. D.] 
It is as living, organized, locomotive machines that the horse, 
camel, ox, and their burden-bearing companions are of practical 
value to man. Hence the consideration of their usefulness and con- 
sequent value to their human masters ultimately and naturally re- 
solves itself into an inquiry concerning the condition of that special 
portion of their organism which controls their function of locomo- 
tion. This is especially true in regard to the members of the equine 
family, the most numerous and valuable of all the beasts of burden, 
and it naturally follows that with the horse for a subject of dis- 
cussion the special topic and leading theme of inquiry, by an easy 
lapse, will become an inquest into the condition and efficiency of his 
power for usefulness as a carrier or traveler. There is a great deal 
of abstract interest in the study of that endowment of the animal 
economy which enables its possessor to change his place at will 
and convey himself whithersoever his needs or his moods may in- 
cline him; how much greater, however, the interest that attaches to 
the subject when it becomes a practical and economic question and 
includes within its purview the various related topics which belong 
to the domains of physiology, pathology, therapeutics, and the entire 
round of scientific investigation into which it is finally merged as a 
subject for medical and surgical consideration—in a word, of actual 
disease and its treatment. It is not surprising that the intricate 
and complicated apparatus of locomotion, with its symmetry and 
harmony of movement and the perfection and beauty of its details 
and adjuncts, by students of creative design and attentive observers 
of nature and her marvelous contrivances and adaptations, should 
be admiringly denominated a living machine. 
Of all the animal tribe the horse, in a state of domesticity, is the 
largest sharer with his master in his liability to the accidents and 
dangers which are among the incidents of civilized life. From his 
exposure to the missiles of war on the battlefield to his chance of 
picking up a nail from the city pavement there is no hour when he is 
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