SPAVIN. 
125 
cceteris paribus, the more likely to occasion them, the greater the 
weight the horse has at the time upon his back — under more than he 
is able well to carry in rapid progression, or to produce spring of 
the body or leap with. Mr. W. Goodwin, many years ago, made 
the remark*, and he was confirmed in it at the time by the obser- 
vation of the late Mr. Boutall, that curbs of which horses were not 
completely cured not infrequently led to the production of spavins. 
We find old writers on farriery ascribing spavins to blows: so 
unlikely, however, is such a part as the inner surface of the hock 
to receive a blow, and so varied would be the situation of spavin 
(which we find is not the case) were it produced by blow, that 
there needs no hesitation in declaring such an assertion has been 
made without foundation — hypothetically. 
Symptoms of Spavin. 
These are in general plain, simple, and unequivocal. The horse 
manifests lameness in one of his hind limbs, and on examination 
a circumscribed spheroid tumour, of the magnitude of half a walnut 
or more — “ a jack” as a spavin is often called by dealers — is evi- 
dent enough both to the sight and feel of the man practised in such 
matters. Lameness, however, the effect of spavin, may be pre- 
sent without any detectible tumour : on the other hand, there may 
be a tumour, even of large size — “ a thumping jack,” in dealers' 
phraseology — -and yet lameness not be a consequence. 
In the Detection of Spavin, the eye is a nicer test than the 
hand, though the two, one in confirmation of the other, constitute 
our ordinary agents in the examination. Commencing with critical 
inspection of the hock, the place in which the examiner can best 
trace in his eye the line of its inner superficies, is standing by the 
side of the horse’s (correspondent) fore limb : here, by stooping his 
body, and carrying his head either near to or away from the 
animal’s abdomen, according as may be required, he will obtain 
the sought-for profile view of the inner superficies of the hock. 
Now, supposing the examiner, in this position, casting his eye down 
the inner surface of a sound or normal hock, he begins, superiorly, 
with that prominence so remarkable in all hocks — 'though more 
conspicuous in some than in others — the internal malleolus of the 
tibia ; from which the descending line, marked in his eye by the 
profile of the superficies, undulates inward and backward until it 
has reached the bottom of the hock, where it suddenly declines 
down to a level with the line of the cannon. Now, it is precisely 
the interval between the prominence of the hock ceasing and the 
* See Veterinarian for 1830 — Discussions of the Veterinary Society. 
