L A'MENESS IN HORSES. 
313 
the arthritic or rheumatic diathesis, which along with the influenza 
so much prevailed. Albeit, he recovered about the middle of 
July from the attack, and went to work again, appearing com- 
pletely restored to health and strength and spirits. 
A month afterwards — the middle of August — while driving him, 
I fancied he went lame in the off fore leg. I at first thought his 
lameness might arise from some temporary cause. I looked for a 
stone in his foot, but found none. I continued my drive notwith- 
standing, and when I returned home I had his shoe taken off. 
Still I found nothing to account for his slight and transitory lame- 
ness : I say transitory , for the following day I drove him again, 
and then he appeared better — hardly lame, in fact, at all. I con- 
tinued working him — unwisely giving way to a vulgar notion that, 
in his somewhat dubious condition, he “ might work sound” — for 
a few days longer; when I became ashamed of myself for driving a 
lame horse, and resolved on submitting him to some treatment 
likely to prove more effective than any thing which had hitherto 
been tried. Considering his lameness to be in his foot, blood was 
taken from the toe, and that followed up by a sweating blister 
upon the pastern. This treatment occupied the month of Sep- 
tember. No relief resulting from it, 1 shewed him in the begin- 
ning of October to Mr. Arthur Cherry, whose opinion was that 
the knee was the seat of his lameness. Accordingly, treatment 
was directed to that locality, with, however, no better success 
than the former. On the 1st November both his fetlock joints 
were blistered, and he was, when fit, turned into straw-yard. There 
he remained until the 15th December, when he was taken up 
again into the stable, and, strange to say, in a Earner condition 
than he had ever yet been ; and was thought now to be lame in 
the near as well as in the off fore limb. At all this I was so 
much surprised, and at the same time so disheartened, that I felt at 
a loss to account for his lameness, or what steps to take by way 
of remedy for it. In this state of mind I was, I may say, driven 
to attack the shoulder , every other joint likely to harbour dis- 
ease having been already tested or treated for it. I therefore, as 
a sort of hit-or-miss treatment, had a large quantity of blood ab- 
stracted from the plat vein, and an ample blister applied around 
the off shoulder joint ; cathartic medicine being at the same time 
given, as on former occasions. After this was done, instead of 
being allowed any motion on the limb, he was kept tied up in a 
stall in a state of absolute rest and quiet. 
January came and passed, February came, still no relief; on the 
contrary, he had, under all the treatment described, become gradu- 
ally lamer and lamer; insomuch that now, at the latter end of 
February, he was going, after all this rest, actually lamer than I 
VOL. XXI. U u 
