THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XXI, 
No. 248. 
AUGUST 1848. 
Third Series, 
No. 8. 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S. and VS. 
[Continued from page 365.] 
SPLINT. 
HITHERTO we have been engaged in searching into the nature 
of lameness resulting from disease of parts commonly known by 
the name of joints , and properly called so from their possessing 
that structure and motion which we naturally associate with such 
an appellation. Now, however, we have come to the consider- 
ation of disease in a part which likewise by the anatomist is 
regarded as a joint, although in structure it is totally different 
from the afore-mentioned proper joint, and is capable of so little 
motion that such is rather to be inferred than demonstrated. The 
splint hones are attached to the sides of the cannon hone , as well 
in the hind as in the fore leg, by an elastic substance partaking of 
the nature both of cartilage and ligament, called fihro- cartilage, 
the fibres composing which decussate one another in passing from 
one bone to the other after the manner of the letter X. There is 
not, as in the proper or perfect joint, here either capsular ligament 
or joint-oil. Still it is called a joint, and, by way of distinction, 
a jihro-cartilaginous joint. 
Comparatively incomplete and small in importance as joints of 
this class appear to be, yet were they designed to answer a useful 
end in the animal economy, and are they fully adequate to the 
purposes thereof, albeit they commonly are rendered, even at an 
early age, of none effect by the conversion of the fibro-cartilage 
composing them into osseous substance. So long as they retain 
their pristine structure, through the elasticity of their uniting me- 
dium, are the splint bones capable, on the imposition of weight 
upon them, of descending against the sides of the cannon*bone, 
and of springing up again into their places the instant such weight 
ceases to operate : from the moment, however, that their uniting 
material becomes osseous — inelastic, hard, brittle — all motion and 
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