532 
AN ESSAY ON CHRONIC PODOTROCHOL1TIS. 
numerous symptoms altogether distinct from those of sprain, or not 
exclusively belonging of it, have glided into the symptomatology 
of this affection; and have been continued there as mathematically 
demonstrated truths; and thus blindly confiding in their infallibility, 
chronic podotrocholitis is declared to be a shoulder disease. He who 
seeks for a thing with preconceived notions respecting it, will in- 
evitably discover it. Once, a head was discovered composed of 
two tentaculce garnished with two lips, armed with hooks ; the 
retractor motion of the tentaculse was observed, and the act of 
suction on the stalk of a grape taken for a living worm, which had 
for some time the honour of figuring among a collection of ento- 
zoaires. Why, then, may not a disease be located in the shoulder, 
the actual seat of which is three feet some odd inches lower down, in 
the trochlea of the foot 1 I have seen even a more striking instance 
of this mania for transposing morbid affections. An individual, who 
was fully persuaded that he was a very learned veterinarian, took 
the uncertain pace of immobilite for rheumatism of the extremities. 
It certainly may be urged against me, that the course of practice 
hitherto followed, which consists in attributing all obscure lame- 
nesses to the shoulder, has been crowned with success ; and hence 
the deduction is drawn that they were not deceived in their 
diagnostic ; but if th epost hoc ergo propter hoc is a false conclusion, 
it is assuredly so in this case. Even the therapeutics of shoulder 
lameness furnish us with proofs. Have not means the most opposite, 
irrational, and repulsive to common sense, been prescribed as modes 
of cure, from times the most remote up to the present day ? And, 
nevertheless, they have been recommended as efficacious, and 
sanctioned by experience. Caton gives, under the head of luxations, 
unintelligible formulae for conjurations; and for other articular 
affections he had recourse to the cabbage, and obtained cures. 
The Konowal encircles the foot of a horse attacked with shoulder- 
lameness with a cord having nine knots in it, and garnishes this 
with twenty-one blades of straw; and with this strange remedy he 
easily, rapidly, and agreeably effects a cure, — God only knows how. 
Experience has sufficiently proved to me how deceitful are the 
juvantia et nocentia to found a diagnostic upon, and how often 
shoulder-lameness has been taken for chronic podotrocholitis. I 
have myself made this mistake, I freely admit. Before observation 
had familiarized me with chronic inflammation of the foot, I consider- 
ed the horses to be lame in the shoulder in many cases where the 
disease was seated in the trochlea, and a treatment applied to that 
part supposed to be suffering effected a cure. One horse in par- 
ticular presented all the symptoms peculiar to shoulder-lameness, 
those which are considered as characteristic of it, such as restricted 
action of the shoulder, flexion of the head, atrophy of the muscles, 
