HORSE CAUSE IN LOWER CANADA. 
341 
other, particularly attacking the joints, and often producing in- 
curable lamenesses. But even if we allow ‘ courhaiure and 
‘ chest-founder’ to be synonimous terms, according to language, 
as stated by a contemporary writer, Sir William Hope, and 
that chest-founder is rheumatism, this explanation will not 
apply to the present case. But it is well known that the old 
farriers believed that almost every disease with which they 
found the legs of the horse affected, and for which they could 
not account, was caused by what they termed ‘descending 
humors;’ and so when they found a swelling on either leg, and 
on any part of it, and could not tell what it was, they set it 
down to arise from some ‘ obstruction in the intestines or lungs,’ 
to use the words of Mons. de Solleysel ; and this reconciles the 
difficulty between the two versions of the meaning of the word 
‘ courbattul the one, that it is any thing which causes the horse 
to be without the free use of his legs, and the other, that it is 
an obstruction in the intestines or lungs. 
“ But there is another disease recognized by the scientific 
practitioners of the modern school, which more nearly in its 
symptoms and consequences resembles the ‘ signs and symp- 
toms’ ofthe * courhaiure' ' of Mons.de Solleysel and the lawyers. In 
chest- founder, or acute rheumatism, there is neither l un battement 
ni un alteration du flanc , ni une chaleur etrangere but, in the 
sub-acute form of pneumonia, there are. A horse may be taken 
out for a day’s work, and may be, from the operation of various 
causes, seized during its absence from home or return to its 
stable with inflammation of the lungs ; and, to use the words of 
Percivall, one of the most eminent modern practitioners, ‘ with 
the exception of such attacks of acute inflammation of the 
lungs as by bold and early treatment are at once arrested and 
supplanted by the return of health, and of such as rapidly con- 
tinue their destructive course in spite of every measure we may 
employ to counteract them, all cases may be said to decline 
into the sub-acute stage before their termination.’ But there is 
another thing, metastasis, or change of place of a disease. Now, 
it often happens that after this sub-acute form of inflammation 
of the lungs (obstruction dans le poumonj, has existed for some 
time, it suddenly leaves that viscus and attacks the legs, and 
particularly the joints ; to use the words of the old farriers, ‘ the 
fever has fallen from the lungs into the feet ;’ and here again 
we have the connection between ‘ the obstruction of the intes- 
tines and lungs,’ and * the want of free use of the legs.’ Mr. 
Percivall distinctly mentions that this sometimes ends in an- 
chylosis of the joints; and what are splints and spavins, (suros 
and eparvin) when on the joints, but incipient anchyloses of 
those joints 1 
VOL. XXIV. 
3 A 
