LAMENESS: ITS CAUSES AND TREATMENT. 317 
quently seen is that of the heavy draft horse and others similarly 
employed. There is a wide margin of difference in respect to the 
degrees of severity which may characterize different cases of side- 
bone. While one may be so slight as to cause no inconvenience, 
another may develop elements of danger which may involve the 
necessity of severe surgical interference. 
Treatment.—The curative treatment should be similar to the pro- 
phylactic, and such means should be used as would tend to prevent 
the deposit of bony matters by checking the acute inflammation 
which causes it. The means recommended are the free use of the 
cold bath; frequent soaking of the feet, and at a later period treat- 
ment with iodin, either by painting the surface with the tincture 
several times daily or by applying an ointment made by mixing 
1 dram of the crystals with 2 ounces of vaseline, rubbed in once a 
day for several days. If this proves to be ineffective, a Spanish-fly 
blister to which a few grains of biniodid of mercury have been 
added will effect in a majority of cases the desired result and remove 
the lameness. If finally this treatment is ineffectual the case must 
be relegated to the surgeon for the operation of neurectomy, or the 
free and deep application of the firing iron. 
SPAVIN. 
(Pls, XXVII-XXIX.) 
This affection, popularly termed bone spavin, is an exostosis of 
the hock joint. The general impression is that in a spavined hock 
the bony growth should be seated on the anterior and internal part 
of the joint, and this is partially correct, as such a growth will con- 
stitute a spavin in the most nearly correct sense of the term. But an 
enlargement may appear on the upper part of the hock-also, or 
possibly a little below the inner side of the lower extremity of the 
shank bone, forming what is known as a high spavin; or, again, the 
growth may form just on the outside of the hock and become an out- 
side or external spavin. And, finally, the entire under surface may 
become the seat of the osseous deposit, and involve the articular face 
of all the bones of the hock, which again is a bone spavin. There 
would seem, then, to be but little difficulty in comprehending the 
nature of a bone spavin, and there would be none but for the fact 
that there are similar affections which may confuse one if the diag- 
nosis is not very carefully made. 
But the hock may be “spavined,” while to all outward observation 
it still retains its perfect form. With no enlargement perceptible to 
sight or touch the animal may yet be disabled by an occult spavin, 
an anchylosis in fact, which has resulted from a union of several 
of the bones of the joint, and it is only those who are able to realize 
