LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
599 
and then found to contain, appears to have been called “ gall,” not 
from any resemblance it was thought to bear to bile, but merely 
from its rancorous malignant aspect. The old writers on fariery 
entertained notions, from the puffy fluctuating sensations the 
tumours upon the legs of horses convey to the feel, that they con- 
tained, as well as other matters, “ wind” or flatus . By Yegetius, 
the skin covering the tumour was said to be “ inflated after the 
similitude of a bladder ;” and Bracken defined the windgall to be 
a “ windy” or “ flatulent tumour,” and thought it arose from “ over- 
stretching the sinewy parts ;” and that it was “ air which had the 
most to do in the matter;” although a little farther on the same 
author informs us, that “ windgalls are soft yielding flatulent tu- 
mours or little bladders full of corrupt jelly .' 7 
The APPELLATION OF “ Windgall” is commonly restricted 
to the bursal tumours upon the sides of the fetlock joint. Such 
restriction of its meaning, however, is neither warranted by autho- 
rity nor supported by pathological investigation. SOLLEYSELL, 
who defines “ the windgall” to be “ a soft swelling, caused by a 
cold, phlegmatic, and serous humour,” used the word in a generic 
sense ; for, although in one place he tells us windgalls “ are seated 
on either side of the fetlock joint,” in another he informs us that 
they “ sometimes grow upon both sides of the hock 77 And this is 
the proper sense in which windgall, in our opinion, ought to be 
understood : a bog spavin and a thorough-pin being, in a medical 
point of view, quite as true windgalls as the tumours usually so 
called at the sides of the fetlock joints. Therefore, the observations 
we are about to make on windgalls we intend should be under- 
stood as meant to apply to bursal tumours of every description, be 
their situation where or their nature what it may. 
The Origin of Windgall will be more likely to be satisfac- 
torily elicited through an inquiry into the functions the bursae in a 
state of health are intended to answer in the animal economy, and 
the mode in which these functions are carried out in the economy 
of the horse in particular, than by any other course we can pursue. 
The bursae are contrivances of Nature to facilitate the sliding of 
tendons and muscles, and even of the skin, over bones or other 
tendons, ligaments, or cartilages, or other projecting parts. By 
preventing too close approximation, and consequent friction, they 
not only protect the parts between which they are interposed 
against any irritation that friction might create, but by removing 
the slightest impediment to it, they facilitate movement, and thus 
become aids to locomotion. And although but passive aids, still 
may the bursa be regarded as parts suffering abuse from any excess 
of action, whether such excess consist in intensity of force or of 
frequency. Such excess of locomotion as goes by the name of 
