ON BONY DISEASES OF THE HOCK. 
Tl-IE insufficiency of the nomenclature used by veterinary writers 
cannot fail to strike any reader at all conversant with the use of 
names and classifications in science, especially in human surgery 
and medicine. This want of specification was pointed out in 
No. 218, p. 85, where it was suggested that separate names 
should be used for the different bony swellings of the fore leg, 
hitherto indiscriminately called splint. 
Mr. Percivall having now concluded his very learned and scien- 
tific treatise on Spavin, it is time to regret that he has allowed 
himself to be so much hampered by existing names and divisions, 
instead of pronouncing and naming the distinctions to which his 
own investigations directly lead. 
It is not too much to observe that, under the name of spavin, 
he has (as have also Messrs. Youatt and Blaine) treated of and al- 
most confounded two diseases, distinct and even opposite, in cause, 
origin, progress, and requisite treatment ; namely, bone spavin and 
another disease, which he has described pp. 302, 3, 4. This latter 
ought to have had a different name ; and, for distinction’s sake, it 
is proposed to call it the Inner hock disease. 
An attempt will be made to distinguish these diseases, more 
with a view to give a clear direction to veterinary inquiry than to 
demand assent to a theory, though that theory logically results 
from the principles and cases laid down by Mr. Percivall. 
For this purpose spavin (i. e., what is commonly called bone 
spavin) will be defined as an exostosis or bony swelling on any 
part of the joint, or set of joints, called the hock. 
Two services Mr. Percivall has clearly rendered the vete- 
rinary profession and the public. He has given the sanction 
of his authority to the doctrine that spavin is not necessarily 
productive of lameness or unsoundness, and he has helped- to 
disabuse his brethren of Professor Coleman’s incomplete and 
erroneous notions as to spavin. In the first he was preceded 
by Mr. Youatt in the 1843 edition of “The Horse.” Indeed, it is 
high time that veterinary writers and practitioners should keep 
pace with the practical observations of horsemen. Let them attend 
a sale of crack hunters at Tattersall’s, and the prices given for 
horses with obviously large spavins will satisfy them that sports- 
men, at least, regard spavin as not much detracting from the value 
of a horse. A minute specification of the various places of the 
hock on which bony swellings may appear, will tend to shew that 
sportsmen are practically right. 
