SPAVIN. 
129 
comes to pass will appear when the time arrives to consider the rea- 
sons why spavins in general cause lameness, and on occasions very 
great pain as well, and this cannot be done before we come to 
treat of the pathology of spavin. It is sufficient for our purpose 
here, that we note and establish the fact, that lameness is not a 
necessary consequence of spavin. Nothing is more common than 
to meet with horses — colts even — who have what the dealers call 
“ knobs” in their spavin "places ; and the time was when such 
‘‘knobs” — which are to all intents and purposes spavins — were 
certificated as constituting unsoundness. This was professional de- 
cision which met with a good deal of opposition at the time, and 
justly so; and the result has been, that such “ knots” are now al- 
lowed to pass as compatible with soundness. I remember, in the 
year 1827, rejecting a mare shewn by the late Mr. Harman 
Dyson to the First Life Guards, on account of having in each 
hock what I regarded as a large spavin : the mare, however, 
went perfectly free from lameness, and it was urged by Mr. Dyson 
at the time that he frequently met with enlargements of the kind 
— “ low down,” as these were — without any accompanying or 
consequent lameness. The mare, notwithstanding, I objected to. 
Since then, however, experience has taught me not to refuse to 
pass such horses; but to take them, guarded by special war- 
ranty ; and I cannot say I have had any cause to regret such a 
change of opinion. 
It is an observation of old date — Gibson makes it- — that “a 
spavin which begins at the lower part of the hock is not so dan- 
gerous as that which puts out higher, between the two round pro- 
cesses of the leg bone ; by which I take it, he means the malleolus 
above and the cuneiform bone below : the same writer adds — “ a 
spavin near the edge is not so bad as that which is more inward, 
towards the middle, as it does not so much affect the bending of 
the hock.” These are observations to which my own experience 
would lead me to subscribe ; and I hope, when we come to the 
pathology of spavin, to have it in my power to shew they admit 
of satisfactory explanation. 
Lameness arising from Spavin is sometimes present 
WITHOUT THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE OF SPAVIN. This is a 
form of disease better known to veterinary surgeons in general, I 
believe, under the denomination of occult hock lameness . My 
own attention to the subject was first drawn so long ago as in the 
year 1815, though then I was quite in the dark as to the nature 
of the case. On my return from Belgium, after the Battle of 
Waterloo, I had in my possession a bay blood mare, who was 
lame in one of her hind legs — I forget which — but whose lameness 
was of that nature that no external sign whatever was apparent to 
VOL. XIX. T 
