122 
SPAVIN. 
Again, in his play of Henry VIII, the bard has used the word 
in his caricature account of the gait some English gallants had 
acquired by their travel in France : — 
“ One would take it, 
That never saw them pace before, the spavin 
And springhalt reigned among ’em.” 
The Definition of spavin, casting away all old and fanciful 
notions about the disease, ought in propriety to be one consistent 
with our present improved state of pathology. For a definition in ac- 
cordance with the commonly received or popular ideas of spavin — 
with, in fact, what we actually see of the disease — we can hardly 
have a better than Blundeville’s : — Spavin is a great hard knot, 
as big as a walnut, growing in the inside (meaning inner side) of 
the hough, hard under the joint, nigh unto the maister veine, and 
causeth the horse to halt.” Defining it to be “ an exostosis” or 
“ a deposit of bony matter” upon the inner side of the hock, as 
our modern writers in general have done, is surely little improve- 
ment on Blundeville’s definition. 
Unfortunately, spavin is one of those appellations in our veteri- 
nary nosology which has not only been applied to diseases of 
opposite natures, but has received different interpretations from 
different writers : thus, Blundeville has one chapter treating “ of 
the drie spauen,” another “ of the wet spauen or through spauen;” 
whereas Solleysell makes the dry spavin synonymous with string- 
halt, calling the bone spavin, ox spavin, “ because old oxen are 
commonly subject to it, and have it extremely big.” In our own 
day we are constantly hearing of bone spavins , bog spavins , and 
blood spavins. Well might Hurtrel D’Arboval say — “ La science 
veterinaire plus qu’aucune autre, est encore embarrassee d’un 
patras indigeste de mots insignificans ou impropres, inutilement 
employes les uns pour les autres, et une judicieuse reforme a 
cet egard est vivement desiree.” For my own part, I would fain 
discard the word spavin altogether from our nosology, and in its 
place introduce some appropriate names for the three or four dis- 
eases it at present is used to denote : such however is the attach- 
ment for old or received appellations, such the prejudice against 
new ones, that I must confess I lack courage to embark in so un- 
gracious an undertaking. One thing, however, I must do, and 
that is, circumscribe the meaning of the word spavin, whenever and 
wherever I may make use of it, to that disease of the hock com- 
monly called bone spavin ; in which sense, that I may render my 
definition at once sufficiently comprehensive and characteristic, 
I DEFINE SPAVIN TO BE an exostosis of the hock, commonly lo- 
cated and detectible on its inner side, whereby bones before move- 
