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THE VETERINARIAN, DECEMBER 1, 1845. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — C icero. 
In calling our attention to the knee-joint as a seat of lame- 
ness, and not so infrequent a one as may be or has been imagined, 
Mr. Cherry is opening to our view a field of hippo-pathology 
hitherto much neglected. The knee in the fore limb may be re- 
garded as the correlative articulation to the hock in the hind limb. 
The one and the other are composed of several small bones, op- 
posed above and below to long cylindrical shafts : both enjoy 
greater sphere of motion than is possessed by other individual 
joints of the limbs ; and while the hock constitutes the axis of that 
motion through which progression is effectuated by the hind limbs, 
the knee is the joint on which what we call “ action” in the fore 
limbs mainly depends. For, let a horse have an ailing or a stiff 
knee-joint, and what is the consequence 1 — why, nothing short of 
inability to flex the leg step forward, thereby rendering him no 
longer of any service to his master. Seeing, then, that the knee is 
an articulation of so much importance in progression, the condition 
it is in, sound or unsound, perfect or imperfect, cannot fail to be 
matter to us of the greatest consideration. It was formerly said, 
“ no foot, no horse we with equal reason say, “ no knee, no 
horse the integrity of the knee being quite of as much conse- 
quence for action as that of the foot is for tread. 
After attentively perusing Mr. Cherry’s two papers on “ Car- 
pitis” — contained in the numbers of this Journal for the last and 
the present month — few reflective veterinarians will, we think, feel 
disposed to differ with us, when we assert that we have all been 
too much in the habit of referring the seat of lameness, at all ob- 
scure in its nature, to the foot ; and that henceforth we shall have 
reason to pay a great deal more attention than we have done to the 
knee. The chief difficulty we anticipate in this investigation of 
knee and foot together is that we may experience in forming 
a correct diagnosis — to say, in many cases, whether the proxi- 
mate cause of the lameness is really in the foot or in the knee ; a 
