LAMENESS 305 
another will commence his work going sound, and at the end of it 
will prove decidedly lame. 
Again, it is not a very uncommon thing for a horse — in par- 
ticular for a young horse — to manifest a gait resembling lameness 
whenever he happens to be put out of his ordinary or natural way 
of going. In my army practice I have had several instances of 
young horses having been brought to me for shewing lameness 
in the longe, who on being run in hand in a straight line have 
evinced nothing like lameness, — demonstrating that what was taken 
for lameness was a peculiar gait produced by the muscles, of one 
limb in particular, being called on to perform actions for which 
they had been uneducated, but which gait, as the muscles gained 
aptitude for such motions, would gradually disappear. 
No one ought to wonder, then, that., on occasions, the best judges 
may differ in opinion concerning even the presence of lameness, 
to say nothing about the seat and cause of it. So various are the 
degrees of intensity in which lameness may shew itself — so faint 
the line of demarcation to be drawn between lameness and sound- 
ness, what one person declares to be but stiffness or tenderness, 
another affirming to be lameness, while a third contends that the 
animal is sound — so indefinite, be it repeated, does all this render 
the presence of lameness in certain cases, that for every examiner 
of the horse in question to come to the same conclusion is hardly 
possible. One or other of the circumstances stated it is that com- 
monly proves the occasion of so much professional counter-allegation 
and counter-swearing in horse causes, in courts of justice ; the legal 
gentlemen and others wondering how veterinary surgeons can so 
strangely on matter-of-fact points hold contrary opinions : if, how- 
ever, these learned characters would but reflect on the fluctuating 
and transitory nature of all vital properties, how Nature in her 
vital operations at one minute ebbs, at another flows, and that 
neither man nor horse, nor any other living creature, is the same 
to-day he was yesterday, they would be more sparing in their de- 
nunciations of those who, for some such reasons as have been de- 
tailed, conscientiously too often find reason to differ or'vary in opi- 
nion on cases of lameness one with another. 
The Signs or Indications of Lameness are of two kinds:— 
One kind being those manifested through action ; the other such 
as are discoverable by examination in a state of rest : by the first 
we determine the limb or limbs shewing the lameness ; by the 
second, the seat and nature of that which gives rise to the 
lameness. 
The Determination of the lame Leg must be a settled 
point before any step be taken to relieve the lameness; the appli- 
cation of remedies to the sound instead of to the unsound limb has 
