SPAVIN. 
303 
gress, that, when the horse came at length to be given up for 
treatment, he was found past all remedy. However, he was 
blistered and turned out ; but, after being turned out, he became 
worse, and was in consequence destroyed. In the off hock, in 
which there was the least lameness, there was no exostosis , no 
alteration in the form of the joint ; but there was ulceration of the 
synovial membrane, with slight caries of the cuneiform bones. In 
the near hock the disease proceeded from caries to anchylosis : 
there was no separating the large and middle cuneiform hones from 
each other even with a chisel, or the latter from the cannon bone. 
In neither hock was heat detected during life ; nor was there any 
tumour or other external indication of disease. 
In the year 1832 a case of spavin occurred to me which fully 
bore out Mr. Goodwin’s first views of the disease. No. 4 of G 
troop of my regiment was passed by me, at four years old, in the 
autumn of 1829, as sound, and was at the time remarked by every 
person who saw him to be one of the handsomest and best bred 
colts we ever recruited. In July 1832 he was brought to me lame. 
I found he had a spavin, for which I ordered the ung. antim. 
tart. ; and the result was, that, at the expiration of a month, with 
rest, he had become sound enough to return to work, and was 
ridden again in the ranks. In the January following, however, 
(five months afterwards) he returned to me as lame as ever. He 
now was fired, and subsequently turned out. In May, being once 
more “ relieved,” sound enough to take his work again, he left my 
care for duty, and continued thereat until the ensuing August, at 
the latter end of which month he experienced an attack of pleurisy, 
of which he died. This afforded me an opportunity of examining 
his spavined hock, and I found such appearances, with the addi- 
tion of the exostosis, as Mr. Goodwin has described, with evident 
ulceration and caries of both the tibia and astragalus as well*. 
The foregoing case, while it is confirmatory — if confirmation 
were needed of a fact now become so notorious — of the morbid 
states of the articulations of the hock in spavin, likewise seems to 
shew that the disease of* joint exists at a very early period; for, 
although this horse was taken under treatment from the first 
day he evinced lameness , yet was he never afterwards rendered 
sound. Bloodletting from the thigh vein, purging, fomentation 
followed up by inungation with the antimonial ointment, and a 
month’s rest, had done as much as it generally does in such cases ; 
* There are naturally — as has been before remarked — little fossce or pits 
observable upon the trochleated surfaces of these two bones : in this case 
these pits were much enlarged, and moreover had margins of tumid and red- 
dened membrane, and were at their bases spotted with red, and asperous 
to the feel, instead of smooth as in health. 
