42 
A CASE OF LAMENESS. 
have enabled me to have at no time failed in the discovery of the 
least lameness that presented itself to my eye, how many a tedious 
and unsatisfactory an examination would have been spared me ; 
how many an after-hour of anxious thought would it have saved 
me, and how many a time would the humiliating acknowledgment 
have been avoided of ignorance of “ where the grief lieth,” when 
its consequence, the lameness itself, has been but too palpable to 
all around : and if there be any of my professional brethren who 
may venture to remark that they have never met with this galling 
annoyance, why possibly I may “bite my thumb;” and then, 
should either of them ask, “ Do you bite your thumb at me, sir V’ 
I may, for the love of peace, reply, “ No, sir, I do not bite my 
thumb at you, sir ; but I bite my thumb, sir.” Whip me your 
Sir Oracles, say I, who by pomposity of speech and verbosity of 
language think to hide the want of discrimination and decision of 
opinion, who are never in the wrong, inasmuch as they always 
take care to leave a loop-hole, not, indeed, “ so deep as a well, nor 
so wide as a church-door,” but still large enough to enable them 
to meet either side of the question, and say, yea, yea, or nay, 
nay, as the result may require. The goddess of ambiguity is the 
deity they worship, that being to them mentally what sleep was 
to the immortal Sancho corporeally ; and well may they exclaim 
with him, “ God Almighty’s blessing on the man who invented it ; 
for it covers one (’s opinions) all over, just like a cloak.” Show 
me a man — to use a favourite mode of expression of our late ta- 
lented Professor — who will give a decided opinion on a case he 
understands, or candidly states his doubts when he does not 
clearly see his way before him, and I will show you a man whose 
opinion you may safely rely on, for it has both judgment and ho- 
nesty to recommend it. 
And do not, I pray you, let the last part of the opinion of the 
worthy Hipposerus be too much despised ; for although at the first 
glance it may appear too much like one of those self-evident truths 
which we all imagine we intuitively comprehend, that if a horse 
is lame, and the lameness is not in the fore-leg, ergo, it must be in 
the hind ; yet, on more mature consideration, it may be found a 
practical axiom well worth rememberirig. 
It was during the very green and early period of my professional 
career that I was called on by a military officer of some rank to see 
his horse, because he would not feed. I, well pleased with the sum- 
mons, promptly attended, recalling to my mind, in order to have 
them at my fingers’ ends at the proper moment, the various causes 
that might have produced such a fearful calamity. On examination, 
I found an animal as fat and phlethoric as the most staunch exhibitor 
at Smithfield could have desired, having somewhere about four or 
