304 
LAMENESS. 
bent and tremulous joints, all evince weakness from hard work ; 
and this is commonly accompanied with more or less grogginess and 
lameness. 
The Presence of Lameness, regarded simply as a bare fact 
to be determined, might by many persons be supposed to be a 
matter uncreative of doubt or difficulty ; and yet too frequently does 
it happen that the horse one person, one veterinary surgeon even, 
calls lame, another will declare to be sound. Discreditable as this 
may appear to be to our profession, it is not always to be avoided. 
From a variety of causes and circumstances, now and then it hap- 
pens that a horse will at one time go lame, at another sound ; or 
his lameness may be of that slight or transient character, that it is 
but by the narrowest and most critical observation perceptible, or 
only manifested, perhaps, when the animal happens to step upon 
a stone or some other hard substance, or on his being turned or 
stopped in some sharp and unexpected manner. A great difficulty 
with which we have to contend in some of these doubtful cases 
is the distinguishing between what seems to be lameness and what 
may in reality be only some peculiarity in the gait of the horse, 
with which the examiner, for want of knowing the animal better, 
is unacquainted. Some horses, from bad riding or driving, ac- 
quire a sort of hitch or lift in their trot ; and though this in gene- 
ral is by a professional eye readily distinguished from actual lame- 
ness, it may still exist in a form that, in a suspected case of 
lameness, might lead to a difficulty in discrimination. The dealer 
in horses is very apt to avail himself of the benefit of any dubious 
point of this kind, and say — “ In my opinion, sir, that which you 
suspect to be lameness is nothing more than the horse’s manner of 
going /” 
But it may happen that a horse may go lame at one time and 
not at another. That horses are subject to rheumatic affections 
I feel no hesitation in asserting, and hope to be able on some future 
occasion to prove ; and that such a disease is of that fleeting cha- 
racter that comes and causes excessive lameness at one time, and 
on a sudden departs and leaves the horse sound, I also hope to be 
able to shew. Again, spasm or cramp may seize a horse, and 
render him for the time dead lame : in another minute or two, the 
horse may go as though nothing had ailed him. When I say, how- 
ever, “ a horse may go lame at one time and not at another,” 1 am 
not making mention of this fact so much in allusion to any disease of 
a fleeting or transient character, as in regard to those cases of lame- 
ness which either manifest themselves on first emerging from the 
stable, or else only become developed through work or some ex- 
traordinary effort : one horse will come lame out of his stable, and 
after having gone awhile and waxed warm, will become sound; 
