74 LAMENESS FROM DISEASE OF THE LlVER. 
habit of considering it a cause of lameness, however obscure, in 
the off fore-leg. In all probability I should not have noticed Dr. 
B.’s opinion, had I not had a case last year that caused me too 
much trouble to fail to impress it strongly on my memory. 
I was sent for in August to see a fine black cart colt which was 
labouring under a slight attack of fever, with a little soreness in 
his sides : he was treated in the ordinary way, and soon recovered. 
He was now found to be lame in the near fore extremity : the shoe 
was removed, but nothing was found in his foot or any part of the leg 
to account for it. He was ordered rest for a week, and at the end 
of that time was no better. The peculiarity of his gait now evidently 
pointed out the shoulder as the seat of lameness. On being taken 
to the pond, although he stood in the water up to his knees, he 
had great difficulty in getting his head low enough to drink, the 
act of bending his neck evidently giving him great pain. His 
shoulder was blistered, setoned, & c. with no effect : the muscles 
wasted, the lameness increased, and he was destroyed after four 
months’ treatment, under the impression that the injury to the 
shoulder, whatever it might be, was incurable. On examining 
the leg after death, every articulation was found perfect ; no traces 
of inflammation, no symptoms of the muscles having been lacerated 
or in any way injured ; in fact, every thing perfectly healthy, except 
that the muscles of the shoulder were paler and less in volume, 
owing to their want of use. Now, for the first time, the idea struck 
me this might be a case of lameness arising from some disease of 
the liver, and, on proceeding to examine that viscus, its appearance, 
I think, justifies me in pronouncing it to be one of those exceed- 
ingly rare and interesting cases. The contents of the chest and 
abdomen were, as might have been expected in a young horse, 
perfectly healthy, with the exception of the liver, which was 
diminished in bulk nearly one-half, but much increased in density, 
and studded throughout with small cartilaginous bodies, which, I 
think, from their shape, might be called asteroids, being full of 
points very much resembling a star. These were so hard, that I 
at first thought they were osseous, but I succeeded after some dif- 
ficulty in deciding their cartilaginous nature. Such is a brief 
sketch of this, to me, extraordinary case, the absence of any cause 
for lameness rendering it so. Although I might be wrong in attri- 
buting the lameness to disease of the liver, if I am right in re- 
ferring to an internal cause of lameness, the case is unique, as in 
all other cases referred to the lameness has been in the off or right 
leg- 
Should you consider the above worthy a page in your valuable 
Journal, you will oblige me by inserting it. 
January 11th, 1847. 
