LAMENESS: ITS CAUSES AND TREATMENT. 385 
however, will also be more superficial. The use of the firing iron 
applied deeply with fine points is then to be strongly recommended, 
to be followed by blisters and various liniments. This course may 
generally be relied on as quite sure to be followed by satisfactory 
results. 
While the treatment is in progress it will, of course, ‘be necessary 
to secure the animal in such manner that a recurrence of the injury 
will be impossible from similar causes to. those which were previously 
responsible. 
CAPPED HOCK. 
A bad habit of rubbing or striking the partitions of their stalls 
“with their hocks prevails among some horses, with the result of an 
injury which shows itself on the upper points of those bones, the 
summit of the cs calcis. From its analogy to the condition of capped 
elbow the designation of capped hock has been applied to this con- 
dition. 
Symptoms.—A. capped hock is therefore but the development of 2 
bruise at the point of the hock, which if many times repeated may 
excite an inflammatory process, with all its usual external symptoms 
of swelling, heat, soreness, and the rest of the now-familiar phenom- 
ena. The swelling is at first diffused, extending more or less on the 
exterior part of the hock, and in a few instances running up along 
the tendons and muscles of the back of the shank. Soon, however, 
unless the irritating causes are continued and repeated, the edema 
diminishes, and, becoming more defined in its external outlines, leaves 
the hock capped with a hygroma. The hygroma, at the very begin- 
ning of the trouble, contains a bloody serosity which soon becomes 
strictly serum, and this, through the influence of an acute inflamma- 
tory action, is liable to undergo a change which converts it into the 
usual purulent product of suppuration. 
The external appearance ought to be sufficient to determine the 
diagnosis, but there are a few signs which may contribute toward a 
nicer identification of the lesion. The capped hock, whether under 
the appearance of an acute, edematous swelling, or as a bloody serous 
collection, or as a simple serous cyst, does not give rise to any remark- 
able local manifestation other than such as have already passed under 
our survey in considering similar cases, nor will it be liable to inter- 
fere with the functions which belong to the member in question, un- 
less it assumes very large dimensions and on each side of the tendons, 
as well as on the summit of the bone. But if the inflammation is 
quite high, if suppuration is developing, if there is a true abscess, 
or—and this is a common complication—especially when the kicking 
or oe of the animal is frequently recurring, then, besides the 
