LAMENESS: ITS CAUSES AND TREATMENT. 



By A. LlAUTABD, M. D., V. M., 

 Principal of the American Veterinary Gollege, New York. 



[Revised in 1903 by Jolin E. Mohler, A. M., V. M. D.] 



It is as living, organized, locomotive machines that the horse, 

 camel, ox, and their burden-bearing companions are of practical 

 value to man. Hence the consideration of their usefulness and con- 

 sequent value to their human masters ultimately and naturally re- 

 solves itself into an inquiry concerning the condition of that special 

 portion of their organism which controls their function of locomo- 

 tion. This is especially true in regard to the members of the equine 

 family, the most numerous and valuable of all the beasts of burden, 

 and it naturally follows that with the horse for a subject of dis- 

 cussion the special, topic and leading theme of inquiry will, by an 

 easy lapse, become an inquest into the condition and efficiency of his 

 power for usefulness as a carrier or traveler. There is a large 

 amount of abstract interest in the study of that endowment of the 

 animal economy which enables its possessor to change his place at 

 will and convey himself whithersoever his needs or his moods may 

 incline him; but how much greater the interest that attaches to the 

 subject when it becomes a practical and economic question and in- 

 cludes within its purview the various related topics which belong to 

 the domains of physiology, pathology, therapeutics, and the entire 

 round of scientific investigation into which it is finally merged as a 

 subject for medical and surgical consideration — in a word, of actual 

 disease and its treatment ! It is not surprising that the intricate 

 and complicated apparatus of locomotion, with its symmetry and 

 harmony of movement and the perfection and beauty. of its details 

 and adjuncts, should, by students of creative design and attentive 

 observers of nature and her marvelous contrivances and adaptations, 

 be admiringly denominated a living machine. 



The horse in a state of domesticity is of all the animal tribe the 

 largest sharer with his master in his liability to the accidents and dan- 

 gers which are among the incidents of civilized life. From his expo- 

 sure to the missiles of war on the battlefield to his chance of picking 

 up a nail from the city pavement there is no hour when he is not in 

 danger of incurring injuries which for their repair may demand the 

 best skill of the veterinary practitioner. And this is true not alone of 

 casualties which belong to the class of external and traumatic cases, 

 but includes as well those of a kind perhaps more numerous, which 

 274 



