240 
NAVICULAR DISEASE. 
By Mr, W. C. Spooner, Southampton . 
Several years since, whilst attending some horses belonging 
to E. B. Portman, Esq. in Dorsetshire, my attention was directed 
by him to a fine old horse working in a waggon, that had been 
lame eleven years, the animal being upwards of twenty years old. 
Mr. P. said he should like for me to examine his foot when he 
died or was killed. I said I would with pleasure, but would tell 
him then the appearance I should find ; and accordingly I de- 
scribed to him the effects produced by the navicular disease, 
being quite persuaded that this was the cause of the lameness. 
Nearly two years afterwards, being in Dorsetshire, Mr. P. told me 
the old horse had been killed, and the foot boiled and the bones 
preserved. I regretted this mode of preparation had been adopt- 
ed, as it prevented my examination of the flexor tendon ; but the 
navicular bone presented appearances of very considerable ulcera- 
tion and roughness of surface, and in all probability the tendon 
had adhered to the bone. But what I wish more particularly to 
point out (it never having been, so far as I am aware, noticed by 
any one else) was the appearance of the os pedis. Its posterior and 
inferior surface, or rather edge, which had once been part of the 
inferior cartilages, had become ossified in such a manner, that, in 
the dried bones, it was, although not anchylosed with the coffin- 
bone, yet completely supported by those exostoses arising from it 
and just spoken of ; so that, if neurotomy had been practised in 
this case, the tendon, although in all probability terribly diseased, 
would not have given way from the pressure of the navicular 
bone, as this bone would have been securely and sufficiently sup- 
ported by the ossifications we have mentioned. It struck me, 
that this not only afforded a beautiful illustration of the conserva- 
tive system of nature in repairing and alleviating injuries, but 
would also account, in some measure, for the very opposite results 
that sometimes attend the operation of neurotomy, in equally bad 
and long established cases : in one instance, perhaps, the horse 
working for years, and in another the tendon giving way in a few 
months ; the former arising, probably, from the existence of simi- 
lar ossification to that I have pointed out, and the latter from 
their absence. 
