NAVICULARTHRIT1S. 
367 
circumstances, weeks may elapse ; nay, when heedlessness or in- 
difference prevails, months may run on before the lameness is re- 
garded as “ bad enough” to lay the horse up. 
In the end, when work is persevered with, the lameness, al- 
though at first but slight and transient, cannot fail to become un- 
remitting and severe ; and it is very possible, as I have already 
shewn, that it may be so from the very beginning. In either case 
the horse, we will say, finds his way to a veterinary surgeon ; and 
his examination elicits such proofs of the existence of navicular- 
thritis as I shall now particularise. 
The Gait OF THE LAME Horse is to the experienced veteri- 
narian demonstrable that the lameness is not of the shoulder . I do 
not mean tp say it is quite impossible to mistake, by the gait, 
shoulder for foot lameness, and vice versa ; but I contend that, to 
the man of observation and experience, it is but rarely that any 
doubt in such respect will present itself ; and that when it does, 
such doubt is commonly resolvable by tests beyond those of simply 
running the horse forward and back again : what these tests are 
will come under consideration when we are on the subject of 
shoulder lameness. But there is a gait likewise which, though 
not peculiar to navicularthritis, tends very much to confirm our 
diagnosis when, from other symptoms, we have reason to believe 
the disease is present. While the animal projects the lame limb 
with less freedom and boldness than its fellow, he endeavours to 
tread upon the toe of the foot and save the heel ; and in trying to 
do so turns the foot in, at the same time that he steps short with 
both feet. And now and then, as he is trotting along, he will sud- 
denly drop most perceptibly upon the sound limb — shewing lame- 
ness at that time evidently enough, though perhaps he shewed it but 
doubtfully in running straight forward : in a step or two, however, 
he recovers himself, and goes again as little lame as before. In- 
spection of the shoe taken off the lame foot — testimony of action 
too much disregarded — will shew by the marks of wear upon it 
the manner in which the animal has been in the habit of treading 
with the lame foot — how much, in fact, the toe is worn in com- 
parison with the heels. The circumstance of the lameness being 
aggravated by work and diminished by repose, taken into account 
with this kind of action, enhances the value of any inference we 
may deduce from action alone : at the same time such evidence as 
this is not to be relied upon to the exclusion of symptoms of more 
importance. 
There being no swelling nor heat or other sign of disease or 
injury discoverable in the leg, or other parts of the limb, is nega- 
tive evidence, in addition to the foregoing, that the foot is in fault; 
therefore, 
