ON HOCK LAMENESS. 
()72 
lameness was in the hock, I would first ask myself the simple 
question, “where is the lameness ?” and although I might be 
right in most cases of obscure lameness in saying it must be in 
the hock, when I had the opportunities which Mr. Spooner had, 
I would very carefully have examined all the limb ; and if I saw 
any thing that struck me as new, before I published it to the 
world, I would have examined every bone, ligament, joint, mus- 
cle, tendon, vessel, and nerve, and have compared the peculiar 
part with the analogous part in a sound limb, before I ventured to 
publish the discovery ; and if it were challenged, I would have 
gone over the limb still more carefully before I so stoutly reas- 
serted my opinion. 
Now, has Mr. Spooner done this? I ask the question. Has 
he gone over the whole limb in the careful manner I have pro- 
posed to myself in such circumstances ? or is he so confident in 
his knowledge of the healthy structure as to know at once the 
slightest shade of change from the normal to the abnormal con- 
dition? I think that even a more practised eye than his might 
refresh itself with a look at nature. But allow me to ask, in what 
manner was the dissection of the limb conducted? Was every 
individual bone, joint, ligament, muscle, tendon, bloodvessel, and 
nerve carefully examined? Had the thickening which must have 
arisen from the bruises, the effects of kicking, been entirely re- 
moved, without leaving any alteration or injury of the subjacent 
parts ? — was the animal sound or lame (which is not distinctly 
stated) at the time of death? — And if the animal was going 
sound, what evidence had Mr. Spooner that the cause of the 
“ obscure hock lameness” had not disappeared entirely along 
with the lameness, without leaving any trace of it behind ? 
Mr. Spooner has, in his first paper, alluded to the u round bone 
persecutors,” and must therefore, of course, be well acquainted with 
the hip joint. In that articulation he will have observed, that 
around both the attachments of the sound ligament there are 
cavities having something of an ulcerated appearance. Is he 
aware that in some cases the ligament is destroyed, and that 
these cavities are filled up; and that the articular surface, both 
of the head of the femur and acetabulum, becomes a continuous 
surface covered with cartilage, as if neither cavities nor ligament 
had ever existed, or at least a very faint trace of them to be found ; 
and that in some of those cases the lameness goes off after the in- 
flammation arising from the injury has completely subsided ? Here, 
then, is a case where a somewhat analogous condition is to be 
found, and in which, when inflammation has occurred, instead of 
ulceration taking place, there is a filling up of the cavities — which 
cavities, I believe, Mr. Spooner will allow to be the healthy structure. 
