WHAT IS SPAVIN ? 
367 
WHAT IS SPAVIN? 
By William Miles, B.C.V.S.L. 
Dear Sir, — I perceive you are involved in a wearisome, 
wordy war, with one of the Agyrtae, anent the efficacy of 
tincture of moonshine in curing spavins ; do not you think, 
instead of wrangling about methods of cure, we should first 
precisely define, what is a spavin. Or rather let us abolish 
them altogether, or leave their cure to those outside bar- 
barians, the quacks, the only fishermen who set nets to catch 
the wind, and take cock lobsters in them. 
Is it not time to reform our Nomenclature ? In this ultima 
thule , spavins are as common as spuds. We have a soi-disant 
veterinary surgeon who is spavin-mad. All horses sent to 
his establishment to be examined, come out spavined, 
whether it is cataract, stringhalt, or broken wind ; perchance 
a bridle lameness, or may be, lame of an ear, it’s all the same. 
Eureka! cock-a-doodle-doo-o-o, “ he's spavined f and the 
worst of it is, all those Solons, the farriers, who know as much 
of the hock as Caliban of Prosperous book, fearing to be 
thought less lynx-eyed in seeing into Orcus , discover spavins 
in the most extraordinary places, so fast as Aubrey did 
ghosts, and, I am of opinion, by the same sense, — the smell ! 
I’ve seen so many fine horses condemned for “incipient in- 
visible spavin ” (there’s a wrinkle for you), that, like Count 
Bathyany, I’m beginning to think nothing of them. Here’s 
an El Dorado for the British Remedy ! 
Some time ago I contributed to a local paper a series of 
articles entitled “ The Humours of Farriery a truthful ex- 
position of the science of hippognostics as it ever was, is, and 
possibly will be, in which I let that most sapient animal 
Jean Taureau, have a peep at himself, “detrahere pellam.” 
Turning over some papers I alighted on an unpublished one, 
apropos de Jacks. 
on spavin. — Syn. Jacics. 
There are a great variety of spavins, there’s incipient 
spavin, and ox spavin, bog spavin, and blood spavin, fat 
spavin, and bone spavin. 
Spavin is one of those bothersome nightmare diseases, that 
would puzzle the whole Philadelphia bar to make head or 
tail of. What can be made out of its nature from its name? 
spavin ! I’m gravelled ! No two farriers or horsemen I 
ever met with, were in one mind about its history or 
