310 OCCULT SPAVIN. 
ment, has to take one step for every morsel it bites of poor and watery 
food. It is forced to travel long and far, or literally to starve; its body 
must rest upon the ulcerated bone, and the weight even be increased by 
the pendulous head before enough herbage can be cropped to sustain the 
life. At every step two ulcerated surfaces grate upon each other and 
are forced violently together; while anguish consumes the flesh, the 
nature of the food may keep in the life, but cannot otherwise than 
depress the spirits. Besides, the horse has been turned from a sheltered 
stall where it was daily groomed, into a field where it has to brave the 
utmost stress of the elements, uncared for and unnoticed. 
At the end of three months the horse is taken up: to the master’s 
disgust, it is found to be not looking smarter and not to be going 
sounder. More routine treatment is now permitted, and the diseased 
limb undergoes further torture; another three months is passed, and the 
lameness becomes worse than ever. The proprietor is loath to part with 
his property; but he often says ‘he wishes the animal were dead.” At 
last, losing all patience, and never having possessed any care for the life 
which had suffered injury in his service, the horse is lent to some carter, 
who undertakes to “work it sound.” This process never, in occult spavin, 
succeeds; the wretched quadruped gets worse day by day, till neither 
oaths nor lashes can prevent misery from limping on three legs. 
At length, worked to a skeleton, the horse is returned to its propri- 
etor, who, inviting pity upon hzs misfortune, that life will feel, and that 
horse-flesh is subject to the ailments affecting all creatures which breathe, 
orders his servant to take ‘‘the beast” to the knacker’s and to get what 
he can for it. 
Such is the history of ulcerated joint. All joints are exposed to 
ulceration; every bone in the fore and hind leg may be thus affected. 
The small bones of the hock are those most commonly diseased; when- 
ever this is the case, the only termination which can reasonably be hoped 
for is that the inflamed surfaces may be united. The bones are then 
bound together by osseous union, and are, of course, firmly locked; 
they are no longer capable of the slightest movement one upon the 
other; but this is no vast evil: many animals are now at work having 
the smaller bones firmly united by osseous deposit. Horses in that con- 
dition are far from useless, even for the highest purposes. 
The man whose animal gets ulceration of the hock-joint ought to 
allow the injured quadruped even twelve months of uninterrupted rest. 
The first thing is to get the sufferer into slings; the earlier this is done 
the better; it takes off the weight from the affected joint, relieves the 
pain, and gives the system full opportunity to rectify the lesson. To 
draw blood to the part and so promote deposit, rub in, once every two 
