LAMENESS: ITS CAUSES AND TREATMENT. 807 
ground, move boldly and rapidly forward, and strike the ground 
promptly and forcibly. All this is due to the fact that the sound 
member carries more than its normal, healthy share of the weight of 
the body, a share which may be in excess from 1 to 250 pounds, and 
thus bring its burden to a figure varying from 251 to 500 pounds, all 
depending upon the degree of the existing lameness, whether it is 
simply a slight tenderness or soreness, or whether the trouble has 
reached a stage which compels the patient to the awkwardness of 
traveling on three legs. 
That all this is not mere theory, but rests on a foundation of fact 
may be established by observing the manifestations attending a single 
alteration in the balancing of the body. In health the support and 
equilibrium of that mass of the body which is borne by the fore legs 
is equalized and passes by regular alternations from the right to the 
left side and vice versa. But if the left leg, becoming disabled, 
relieves itself by leaning, as it were, on the right, the latter becomes, 
consequently, practically heavier and the mass of the body will 
incline or settle upon that side. Lameness of the left side, therefore, 
means dropping or settling on the right and vice versa. We empha- 
‘size this statement and insist upon it, the more from the frequency 
of the instances of error which have come under our notice, in which 
persons have insisted upon their view that the leg which is the seat 
of the lameness is that upon which he drops and which the animal is 
usually supposed to favor. 
HOW TO DETECT THE SEAT OF LAMENESS. 
Properly appreciating the remarks which have preceded, and fully 
comprehending the modus operandi and the true pathology of lame- 
ness, but little remains to be done in order to reach an answer to the 
question as to which side of the animal is the seat of the lameness, 
except.to examine the patient while in action. We have already stated 
our reasons for preferring the movement of trotting for this purpose. 
Tn conducting such an examination the animal should be unblanketed, 
and held by a plain halter in the hands of a man who knows how to 
manage his paces, and the trial should always be made over a firm, 
hard road whenever it is available. He is to be examined from 
various positions—from before, from behind, and from each side. 
Watching him as he approaches, as he passes by, and as he recedes, 
the observer should carefully study that important action which we 
have spoken of as the dropping of the body upon one extremity or the 
other, and this can readily be detected by attending closely to the 
motions of the head and of the hip. The head drops on the same side 
on which the mass of the body will fall, dropping toward the right 
when the lameness is in the left fore leg, and the hip dropping in pos- 
terior lameness, also on the sound leg, the reversal of the conditions, 
