LAMENESS. 
307 
the quadruped are widely different. A lame man, with his two 
legs, is compelled at every alternate step he takes to throw his 
weight upon his ailing limb ; the instant, however, he has done so 
the pain occasioned by it makes him flinch from the pressure, and 
he instinctively brings forward, with all the celerity he can, his 
sound limb to the relief of the infirm one, and upon that reposes 
his weight, as it were, with a sort of satisfaction for the moment at 
the ease thereby afforded himself. Not so, however, with the ani- 
mal that has four legs. In the quadruped’s walk there is that 
rapid succession of movement in the limbs, and consequent rapid 
succession of bearing upon them, that the weight of the body 
thrown upon the lame leg is too light and transient to cause him to 
flinch or evince lameness, unless the pressure, light and transient 
as it is, gives him actual pain. But in the trot, the weight he is 
obliged to throw upon the leg may cause the animal pain, notwith- 
standing, as I said before, he evinced no pain in his walk, and on 
this account ; — because the limbs in the accelerated pace, being 
elevated and projected with additional force, come to the ground 
with more weight and more concussion. In the gallop, the legs 
stride and come to the ground with more force still ; and, therefore, 
a person might suppose that this is a pace in which a horse would 
most of all manifest his lameness. Such, however, is not the fact; 
and the reason why it is not, is, that the two fore and two hind 
limbs act with that simultaneousness and velocity that, the sound 
leg taking the greatest share of the weight, and thereby saving the 
infirm one, no perceptible flinching or dropping takes place : none, 
at least, so long as the horse is capable of galloping. 
In respect to the leg upon which a horse “ drops,” any man who 
has been lame himself — who has had (and who has not had?) a 
painful corn — and has noted his own limping action, will not need 
to be informed that every time pressure upon his corned foot gives 
him pain, instantly flinching from it, by a momentary elevation of 
his body, he lifts his weight as much as he can off his ailing foot, 
to let it down or “drop” upon his sound foot. The same thing 
happens in the lame horse. Flinching from the pressure or con- 
cussion of the lame leg or foot against the ground, he suddenly 
lifts the lame side of his body to “drop” the weight of it upon the 
sound side. Should the lameness be in one of his fore limbs, the 
head with the body is elevated and depressed, the latter motion 
giving to the head that significant “nod” by which we distinguish 
at once which is the lame leg ; on the other hand, if the lameness 
be in a hind limb, the croup will ascend and descend, the head 
being kept lowered the while. It is by observing the elevation 
and declination or “nodding of the head,” and the raising and 
sinking of the croup, that we in general are enabled to say at once 
