LAMENESS: ITS CAUSES AND TREATMENT. 383 
the exercise of considerable practical ingenuity to adjust and retain 
the appliances necessary to insure a good final result. 
In the long description of the treatment of the varieties of capped 
elbow I have thus far omitted any mention of one method which is 
practiced and commended by not a few. I refer to the use of setons, 
introduced through the tumor. My own experience and the observa- 
tion of many failures from this method led me to abandon it. 
CAPPED KNEE. 
The passage of the tendons of the extensor muscle of the cannon, as 
it glides in front of the knee joint, is assisted by one of the little 
bursx before mentioned, and when this becomes the seat of dropsical 
collection a hygroma is formed and the knee is “capped.” Though 
in its history somewhat analogous to the capped elbow, there are 
points of difference between them. Their development may prove a 
source of great annoyance from the fact of the blemish which they 
constitute. 
Cause——The capped knee presents itself under various conditions. 
It is sometimes the result of a bruise or contusion, often repeated, 
inflicted upon himself by a horse addicted to the habit of pawing 
while in the stable and striking the front of the stall with his knees. 
Another class of patients is formed of those weak-kneed animals 
which are subject to falling and bruising the front of the joint 
against the ground, the results no being always of the same character. 
Symptoms.—The lesion may be a simple bruise, or it may be a 
severe contusion with swelling, edema, heat, and pain. The joint 
becomes so stiff and rigid that it interferes with locomotion and yet 
under careful simple treatment the trouble may disappear. 
Again, instead of altogether passing off, the edema may diminish 
in extent, becoming more defined in form and may remain as a swell- 
ing on the front part of the knee. Resulting from the crushing of 
small blood vessels, this is necessarily full of blood. The swelling is 
somewhat soft, diffuse, not painful, more or less fluctuating, and 
after a few days becomes crepitant under the pressure of the hand. 
Instead of being filled with blood the swelling may be full of 
serum, as often occurs when violence, though perhaps slight, has been 
frequently repeated. In that case the swelling is generally well de- 
fined, soft, and painless, with more or less fluctuation, and it may 
even become pendulous. In other cases the swelling may be of an 
acute, inflammatory nature, with heat and pain, accompanied with 
stiffness of the joint. This leads to the formation of an abscess. 
Whatever the nature of these swellings may be, either full of blood, 
serum, or pus, some blemish usually remains after treatment. 
Prognosis.—Though simple bruises of the knee without extensive 
lesions are usually of trifling account, a different prognosis must be 
