PROGRESS OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ART. 577 
marked when both sesamoids are affected on either limb ; 
and, further on, he says that, if a horse thus lame is made 
to trot awhile and then left at rest a few minutes, on being 
brought out again the lameness is very marked, even in a 
walk. He never observed this disease to come on periodically, 
but a horse having been at rest, all the symptoms might 
temporarily disappear. 
Very often, where the perforans tendon passes through the 
perforatus, there would be a swelling perceptible even to an 
ordinary observer. This is, however, never to be observed 
till months or a year or even longer, after the first appearance 
of disease. 
Mascher was rarely fortunate in the treatment of this 
disease. If he could form an accurate diagnosis at the com- 
mencement, the application of a blister of cantharides and 
several weeks’ rest, were sufficient to effect a cure. If the 
lameness were not completely removed, the actual cautery 
was had recourse to, and sometimes beneficially. — 4 Mag. fur 
die Ges . Thierheilj July 1855. 
Though Turner spoke of disease of the sesamoidal bones 
in 1847 — though he brought the subject again before the 
profession in 1850 — and in April last, under the head sesa- 
moiditis, no one has risen to substantiate the facts adduced, 
nor invalidate the views propounded ! It is certainly strange 
that “ it has not been duly recognised by many of the metro- 
politan veterinary authorities who are actively engaged in 
practice;” and as to British veterinary authors, ancient or 
modern, they are silent on the matter. 
M. Mascher springs upin Hanover, in July 1855, and though 
no veterinarians in the world are as learned, and as universally 
educated, as the Germans, still it appears, till his time, the 
important lesions of the fetlock, now under consideration, 
have been doomed, even in Germany , to be classed amongst 
things unknown ! 
Veterinarians often assert, when a horse is presented to 
them lame, that he has sprained or jarred his fetlock joints, 
and the French consider “ l’entorse du boulet,” (sprain of 
the fetlocks), one of the common injuries of the fore or hind 
limbs of horses, inducing lameness. I am persuaded, how- 
ever, that this has been all guesswork, for I have myself had 
occasion irrefutably to prove a horse was spavined, or had 
navicular disease, when his fetlocks have been blistered. I 
have repeatedly questioned continental practitioners and pro- 
fessors, and found that their diagnoses were made by exclu- 
sion , asserting the fetlock to be diseased because they thought 
they could see no disease elsewhere. Was it not thus that 
for many years, and even at the present time in some coun- 
