284 DISEASES OP THE HORSE. 



often require the exercise of a closer scrutiny, and draw upon all the 

 resources of the experienced practitioner to settle satisfactorily. That 

 a horse is lame in a given leg may be easily determined, but when it 

 becomes necessary to pronounce upon the query as to what part, what 

 region, what structure is affected, the easy part of the task is over, 

 and the more difficult and important, because more obscure, portion 

 of the investigation has commenced — except, of course, in cases of 

 which the features are too distinctly evident to the senses to admit of 

 error. It is true that by carefully noting the manner in which a lame 

 leg is performing its functions, and closely scrutinizing the motions 

 of the whole extremity, and especially of the various joints which 

 enter into its structure; by minutely examining every part of the 

 limb; by observing the outlines; by testing the change, if any, in 

 temperature and the state of the sensibility — all these investigations 

 may guide the surgeon to a correct localization of the seat of trouble, 

 but he must carefully refrain from the adoption of a hasty conclusion, 

 and, above all, assure himself that he has not failed to make the foot, 

 of all the organs of the horse the most liable to injury and lesion, the 

 subject of the most thorough and minute examination of all the parts 

 which compose the suffering extremity. 



The greater liability of the foot than of any other part of the 

 extremities to injury from casualties, natural to its situation and use, 

 should always suggest the beginning of an inquiry, especially in an 

 obscure case of lameness at that point. Indeed the lameness may 

 have an apparent location elsewhere when that is the true seat of 

 the trouble, and the surgeon who, while examining his lame patient, 

 discovers a ringbone, and satisfying himself that he has encountered 

 the cause of the disordered action suspends his investigation without 

 subjecting the foot to a close scrutiny, may deeply regret his neglect 

 and inadvertence at a later day, when regrets will avail nothing 

 toward remedying the irreparable injury which has ensued upon his 

 partial method of exploration. But, as in human pathological experi- 

 ence, there are instances when inscrutable diseases will deliver their 

 fatal messages, while leaving no mark and making no sign by which 

 they might be identified and classified, so it will happen that in the 

 humbler animals the onset and progress of mysterious and unrecogniz- 

 able ailments will at times baffle the most skilled veterinarian, and 

 leave our burden-bearing servants to succumb to the inevitable, and 

 suffer and perish in unrelieved distress. 



DISEASES or BONES. 

 PERIOSTITIS, OSTITIS, AND EXOSTOSIS. 



From the closeness and intimacy of the connection existing between 



the two principal elements of the bony structure while in health, it 



frequently becomes exceedingly difficult, when a state of disease has 



supervened, to discriminate accurately as to the part primarily af- 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



