LAMENESS 
423 
A Division of Unsoundness into actual and prospective : 
the latter denomination indicating a state of temporary or transitory 
soundness. Notwithstanding a horse may be free from lameness, 
may go sound, yet, so long as he has that about him which will 
probably or surely render him lame the first time he is put to hard 
work, is he virtually an unsound horse, in honesty unwarrantable ; 
and the best denomination we are able to find for such a failable 
condition — a sort of intermediate state between soundness and 
unsoundness — is prospective unsoundness. So far as abstract 
action is concerned, the horse, it is true, must be regarded as 
sound ; although that which he has upon him, making him liable 
or certain to become lame whenever he is put to excess of action or 
work, certainly stands in the way of any warranty of soundness 
being given. 
Prospective unsoundness, however, although it relieves us 
from the necessity of doing that which no professional man con- 
scientiously can do in very many of the horses brought before 
him, viz., of pronouncing the horse either actually sound or 
unsound, yet unfortunately opens a door through which crowds of 
cases, really doubtful in their character or rendered so by the 
variety of opinions given on them, are ready to be forced in, and 
made to perplex us in coming to any proper or judicious selection 
of them. One horse has manifest disease , in some form or another, 
as the cause of his being pronounced likely or certain to go lame 
at no very remote period : his case admits of no question. But 
another horse has — no disease, — only a mal-formation, a defor- 
mity, or misshapenness, the result of which is weakness of limb, 
and consequent liability to failure — to lameness, in fact. A third 
horse has neither disease nor deformity, nothing but a “ bad 
habit,” and that is said to amount to unsoundness. And it is the 
cases that come under one or other of these latter denominations, — 
which are the offspring either of natural defect, of use or wear, 
or of habit — that, for the most part, puzzle veterinary practitioners 
in coming to decisions on soundness. 
To elucidate these observations by example : — A horse shall have 
a spavin or a curb, or a swollen or fired back sinew, any disease, 
in short, from which on exertion he is likely, as our experience 
tells us, to become lame : such a horse is prospectively unsound. 
But, suppose he have a club-foot, a parrot mouth, bent limbs, 
curved or curby looking hocks, weak joints, narrow or flat feet, a 
hip down, &c. — all natural deformities or malformations, none of 
them coming fairly or popularly under the category of disease — 
what is to be done in passing judgment upon them 1 The equitable 
adjudication appears to be, as in the case of disease, to declare that 
