280 DISEASES OP THE HORSE. 



may so take advantage of the lapse of time as to root itself too deeply 

 into the economy to be subverted, and become transformed into a 

 disabling chronic case, or possibly one that is incurable and fatal. 

 Hence the impolicy of depreciating early symptoms because they are 

 unaccompanied by distinct and pronounced characteristics, and from 

 a lack of threatening appearances inferring the absence of danger. 

 The possibilities of an ambush can never be safely ignored. An extra 

 caution costs nothing, even if wasted. The fulfillment of the first 

 duty of a practitioner, when introduced to a, case, is not always an 

 easy task, though it is too frequently expected that the diagnosis, or 

 " what is the matter " verdict, will be reached by the quickest and 

 surest kind of an "instantaneous process" and a sure prognosis, or 

 " how will it end," guessed at instanter. 



Usually the discovery that the animal is becoming lame is compar- 

 atively an easy matter to a careful observer. Such a person will 

 readily note the changes of movements which will have taken place 

 in the animal he has been accustomed to drive or ride, unless they 

 are indeed slight and limited to the last degree. But what is not 

 always easy is the detection, after discovering the fact of an existing 

 irregularity, of the locality of its point of origin, and whether its 

 seat be in the near or off leg, or in the fore or the hind part of the 

 body. These are questions too often wrongly answered, notwith- 

 standing the fact that with a little careful scrutiny the point may be 

 easily settled. The error, which is-too often committed, of pronounc- 

 ing the leg upon which the animal travels soundly as the seat of the 

 lameness, is the result of a misinterpretation of the physiology of 

 locomotion in the crippled animal. Much depends upon the gait with 

 which the animal moves while under examination. The act of walki 

 ing is unfavorable for accurate observation, though, if the animal 

 walks on three legs, the decision is easy to reach. The action of gal- 

 loping will often, by the rapidity of the muscular movements and 

 their quick succession, interfere with a nice study of their rhythm, and 

 it is only under some peculiar circumstances that the examination can 

 be safely conducted while the animal is moving with that gait. It is 

 while the animal is trotting that th& investigation is made with the 

 best chances of an intelligent decision, and it is while moving with 

 that gait, therefore, that the points should be looked for which must 

 form the elements of the diagnosis. 



Our first consideration should be the physiology of normal or 

 healthy locomotion, that from thence we may the more easily reach 

 our conclusions touching lameness, or that which is abnormal, and 

 by this process we ought to succeed in obtaining a clew to the solution 

 of the first problem, to wit, in which leg is the seat of the lameness? 



A word of definition is here necessary, in order to render that which 

 follows more easily intelligible. In veterinary nomenclature each 



