544 
RHEUMATIC LAMENESS. 
is either the sheath of the flexor tendon or the fetlock joint : we 
have never seen the disease in any other part ; at the same time, 
we cannot give any good reason why these parts, to the exclusion 
of their fellows, should prove the seat of it. A puffy circumscribed 
tumour is felt upon the flexor tendons, about midway between 
the knee and fetlock, which, shewn to a veterinarian unacquainted 
with the history of the case, might, from its appearance, be pro- 
nounced to be the effect of sprain, or by any unprofessional person 
called “ broken down in the flexor sinews.” The tumour evi- 
dently contains fluid — is, in fact, a collection of synovia between 
the tendons, confined there, seemingly, by adhesion of the investing 
cellular tissue. When the fetlock joint is the seat of the disease, 
there is perceptible heat and fulness of the whole joint, with tume- 
faction and fluctuation of the sesamoid bursse — evident windgalls, 
in fact. In either case, the disease assumes the appearance of 
what we are in the habit of calling sprain of those parts ; nor 
should we, as we have before said, setting aside the knowledge 
of their history, be able by manual examination to distinguish one 
affection from the other. The ordinary duration of the disease, or 
of the lameness — for they come and go together — is from one to 
three weeks ; rarely is its duration less than a week or so long as 
a month, and its common termination is in translation into another 
leg ; from one fore leg into the other, or into a hind leg, or from 
one hind leg into the other hind leg. 
Fever in the feet is another disease having on occasions a me- 
tastatic origin, and in this form its ordinary forerunner is pneu- 
monia. It has, however, supervened on both bowel and brain 
affections, of which my father has made mention in a paper he 
sent to The Veterinarian in 1829. And yet inflammation 
does not so frequently, I believe, fall from the thoracic organs into 
the feet as into the joints or bursal structures ; and if fever in the 
feet may arise, as we have shewn it can, from other than pul- 
monary disease, the probability is that rheumatic inflammation 
may have other than pleuritic or pulmonary origin — may have, in 
fact, bowel or cerebral origin : though we must confess, for our 
own part, we have no cases of the kind to bring forward. Rheu- 
matic lameness has, however, occurred under our observation at so 
remote a period after influenza or pleuro-pneumonia, that we have 
felt at a loss to say whether the lameness was to be referred to 
the foregoing constitutional affection or not — whether, in point of 
fact, it might not sometimes have spontaneous origin, be a disease 
sui generis , or of an idiopathic nature. The following cases, of 
late occurrence, will probably throw some light on the subject : — 
Mr. T w’s gelding, five years old, was seized on the 4th of 
February, 1845, with sore throat and fever, which in a few days 
