LAMENESS. 
665 
When the lameness comes on gradually, and insidiously rather, 
as sometimes it does, appearing at first so slight as to incline us 
(from an unwillingness, perhaps, to see any failing in a favourite) 
to doubt of its existence, we apprehend that the injury to the joint 
has been such as to excite inflammation of a mild character in it, 
without at once being productive of ulceration in the membrane. 
Of course, a repetition of injury will excite more inflammation, 
and that will produce more lameness, and there will speedily be 
ulceration following : the case in fact, although its origin has been 
different, will be reduced to a parallel, in point of pathological 
nature, with that whose beginning was sudden. 
The effects of this (sub-acute) inflammation on the synovial 
membrane are these ; — either aggravation of the breach originally 
made in the form of ulceration, or the production of ulceration 
w’here no breach has existed. But this ulceration does not appear 
to be productive of any (or of but extremely little) purulent secre- 
tion; else we should at times see abscess of the joint during life, or 
collections of purulent matter after death, which we know never 
to be the case. There is a decrease in the supply of synovia, 
the very contrary to what takes place in rheumatic inflammation ; 
and after a time a softening takes place of the articular cartilages, 
into which the ulceration has now sunk, and which, in point of 
fact, has been its bed or bottom from the commencement. Ulcer- 
ation and softening of the articular cartilages is followed by caries 
and softening of the ends or articular surfaces of the bones, the 
result of which is — inflammatory action in the meanwhile being 
aroused in the surrounding ligamentary and fibro-cartilaginous 
tissues — -anchylosis, partial or complete, and destruction, at least 
for any useful purpose, of the motions of the joint. 
The LAMENESS consequent on ulcerative disease of joints is 
found to be, as indeed might be expected, greater at one time than 
at another. There are reasons for this. In the first place, it must 
be remembered that the synovial membrane — that part of it at least 
which is reflected upon the articular cartilages — is not in health 
a very sensitive part, whatever it may be in a state of inflamma- 
tion or of ulceration ; and in respect to ulceration, it must also 
be remembered that, although its commencement is certainly in the 
membranous tissue, the cartilage becomes its veritable bed — soon, 
indeed, its all but exclusive seat; and the articular cartilages we 
know of themselves possess little or no sensibility at any time. 
When once caries of the bone, however, commences, again does 
the case, so far as lameness is concerned, change its nature ; bone 
being, in a state of disease, a sensitive structure. The grand or 
chief producer of lameness would appear to be the inflammation 
present. In the case of a recent injury, so long as the breach was 
