662 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
point of fact require no treatment : to which another reason may be 
added for letting them alone, and that is, that in general, par- 
ticularly when they are chronic, they prove exceedingly stubborn 
and intractable under treatment of every kind. If windgalls are 
to be treated at all, the earlier after their formation remedies are 
employed the better the chance of their reduction or removal : 
hence it is that in young horses such tumefactions are frequently 
entirely got rid of, not more, perhaps, by treatment than by atten- 
tion to any circumstances or agents to which they may appear to 
owe their production. Taking such animals off any work that may 
appear to be too much for their limbs to sustain ; remedying any 
injurious or mal-position into which their fetlock joints may have 
been thrown either by shoeing or the improper slant given to the 
standing of their stalls; preventing kicking in the stall, pawing, &c. ; 
is all that is frequently required for the cure of such cases as 
capped hock, capped elbow, tumefied knee, &c. ; these or other 
causes, if there be any, being removed, we may look forward in 
young subjects, and in adults sometimes, so long as their windgalls 
are not become chronic, to more or less spontaneous subsidence 
of them. Indeed, it frequently happens that, as young animals 
grow and alter, so their windgalls in part or altogether disappear : 
whereas in aged horses — in subjects in whom they have “ grown 
with their growth and strengthened with their strength” — it is a for- 
lorn hope to set about attempting to get rid of them ; for even should 
any trifling reduction in their volume be effected by medicinal 
means, there remains great probability of their returning to their 
former size whenever the animal is put to the same hard work 
again to which the tumours owed their production. 
Nevertheless, if lameness be an accompaniment of the bursal 
swelling, or if it be such as either from its volume or situation 
incommodes the animal in any way, or offends his master’s eye, 
treatment must be adopted ; and we know of no better, when the 
case is recent, than such as is a combination of the antiphlogistic 
and the stimulant. We have repeatedly found, for the reduction 
of recent bursal tumefaction, a good blood-letting as topical as it 
can be made, combined with the operation of a brisk cathartic upon 
the body, and that of a blister upon the windgall itself, most 
effective in reducing the enlargement. We are not friendly to 
fomentations, the best of which in such a case would be the 
spongio-piline (of which, by the by, we have not yet had sufficient 
trial to enable us to offer any opinion about in respect to windgall) ; 
neither have we experienced the same happy results from refri- 
gerant lotions and bandaging as we have from vesicatories. And 
so soon as the influence of the blister has subsided, it is an 
excellent practice to renew the excitement by daily well rubbing 
into the surface of the tumour some ointment or embrocation 
