LAMENESS. 
483 
nomena are observable more particularly upon the loose or capsular 
portion of the membrane, the last — ulceration — is almost peculiar 
to the reflected or cartilaginous portion of the membrane. The best 
examples we have of increased secretion of synovia are furnished 
by the disease known under the vulgar and incorrect appellation of 
windgall ; which is, in fact, a distention of a bursa mucosa, with 
(not wind, but) synovia. The capped hock, puffy and fluctuating 
to the feel and tap of the finger, is another illustration of synovia 
collected in undue quantity, and one in which the augmented se- 
cretion is commonly the sequel of inflammation or increased vas- 
cular action, originating in some contusion from a kick or blow of 
some kind. Likewise, the soft undulating tumour so frequently 
seen growing from the point of the elbow — and which might be 
called a capped olecranon or elbow — from the enormous size which 
it now and then acquires, affords an excellent specimen of synovial 
tumefaction. Indeed, there is hardly a bursal cavity in the body 
but what has been known, on one occasion or another, to shew dis- 
ease of this kind ; and we find the same redundance of joint-oil 
pouring out of open joints, and now and then may detect collec- 
tions in closed joints. Inflammation excited in a joint from an ordi- 
nary sprain, no doubt, commonly gives rise to some augmentation 
of its secretion, though it is not always detected by us, perhaps 
seldomer, from its not being so much sought after as other effects 
of the sprain: that, however, which we call fulness of the joint, 
though it arises, in part, from infiltration exterior to the joint, is 
also commonly ascribable, in some measure, to this inward cause. 
The best illustration we have, however, in hippiatric practice, of 
such accumulated synovial secretion, occurs in the disease to which 
the joints are occasionally subject from constitutional disease or de- 
rangement; that which we would call the rheumatic inflammation 
of the joints of horses. All veterinarians are now in the habit of 
noting, when they occur, cases of metastasis of inflammation from 
the thoracic viscera into the joints and sheaths of the tendons, and 
well know what swelling, from collected synovia, and what heat 
and tenderness and excessive lameness, such inflammation occa- 
sions. So long ago as the year 1829 I drew attention to this sub- 
ject in a case I sent to The Veterinarian*; and the year following 
I had the gratification to learn that my lamented friend, Mr. Castley, 
confirmed my observations in a paper containing a fuller and more 
graphic account of the same*. That there occurs, under certain 
circumstances, the opposite morbid condition, viz. a dry state of 
joint from a lack of synovia, is a view both theory and observa- 
tion would lead us to entertain, though it may be difficult to adduce 
examples of it. 
* See vols. ii and iii of The Veterinarian. 
