SPAVIN. 
365 
spring of inward and insidious disease — disease of a nature that 
has been some considerable time coming to such maturity as to 
occasion pain, and that sufficient to produce lameness ; and that 
will require — as most diseases, they say, require double the time 
to quit they take in coming — a more considerable time still before 
it takes its departure. 
Persons bringing to us lame horses are naturally anxious about 
them, importunate to be informed not only as to the probabi- 
lity of cure, but as to the space of time the cure, supposing it to 
be probable, is likely to occupy in bringing about : they, of course, 
especially want to know when they shall be able to work their 
horses again, and, in their importunity to obtain as early a date as 
they can to this day of restoration to work, they are very likely 
to extract from the practitioner, at some unguarded moment, a 
promise of a shorter time being occupied in treatment than, in 
justice to his patient as well as to himself, he ought to have con- 
sented to. It is not impossible the veterinary surgeon may be 
requested to treat the spavin during the time the horse is at work, 
or with an understanding that a few days, or a week, or even two 
weeks, will be yielded for the process of cure. It is not to be 
denied that incipient cases of spavin do now and then present 
themselves, which — consisting as some or most of them at so early 
a stage probably do, purely in exostosis — are capable of being, 
in the course of a week or a fortnight, relieved to that degree that 
lameness almost or quite disappears, and that, therefore, the horse 
is naturally enough considered by his owner to be fit to return to 
his work: comparatively few, however, will the number of such 
cases be as will not return for medical treatment, and in an aggra- 
vated and even hopeless pathological condition, compared to what 
they presented in the first instance. The disease, which at first 
was confined to the periosteal tissues outside the hock joint, has 
now invaded the synovial membrane within, and the result is, 
ulceration of the articular cartilages covering the cushion bones : 
a sad addition has been made to the already existing disease ; the 
case has become converted from one of a simple into one of a com- 
plex character; and the cure, if now practicable at all, has been 
thrown back weeks, if not months. The case of the troop horse 
(C 4), related at page 303, furnishes a good example of this prone-' 
ness to relapse ; and it is the more striking in this case, because 
what was deemed sufficient rest was at each period of fresh attack 
fully conceded. The same thing happens in disease of the navi- 
cular joint. Here is, as in spavin, ulcerative disease of joint; 
and whatever treatment be adopted, either in one case or the other, 
rest — absolute repose of the diseased joint — and that for a sufficient 
length of time, is indispensably required. The curability of spa- 
