THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XXI, 
No. 247. 
JULY 1848. 
Third Series, 
No. 7. 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S. and V.S. 
[Continued from page 316.] 
SHOULDER LAMENESS. 
AS the “ round bone” or hip-joint has frequently had disease or 
derangement attributed to it in lamenesses of the hind limb when 
all the while the seat of ailment has been the hock, so the shoulder, 
over and over again, has been imagined to have suffered “ wrench,” 
or laceration, or injury of some sort, when all the time the seat of 
lameness has been the foot. At the time and by the persons such 
mistakes used to be made the different sites and kinds of lameness 
were not so well understood as they are by veterinary surgeons of 
the present day; and since both the hip and shoulder-joints are parts 
removed at some distances from the surface of the body, and are 
both of them pretty thickly clothed with muscle, disease might 
exist in either without there being any external signs of its pre- 
sence, or be imputed to either when it did not exist without much 
apprehension of error being detected, seeing that no very obvious 
signs o f any cause for lameness were to be found elsewhere. Action 
is our great guide in directing our attention to the shoulder as the 
seat of lameness; and though, as far as this goes, we may not 
have improved any very great deal since the time of old Solley- 
sell, still has so much light been thrown upon lameness in other 
parts, that, finding additional causes for it, we are less often in 
doubt concerning it, and consequently less likely to impute it to 
quarters in which its existence is by external signs indemonstra- 
ble. Nothing has reflected brighter light on the seat and nature 
of lameness in general than the discovery of navicular thritis. 
Before the navicular joint was known to be so common a site of 
disease as it has since been proved to be, ignorance or indecision 
in regard to the seat and nature of lameness found a ready and 
VOL. XXI. 3 c 
