302 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
How often must he have to perform what he little anticipated he 
was going to do ! — how frequently must he be forced or see occasion 
to be obliged to perform so much more or so much less than he 
had reckoned on, and more especially while in active pursuit in 
hunting or steeple-chasing ! — and therefore we have a right to 
suppose that muscular lesion is a less uncommon cause of lameness 
than we are in the habit, in our practice, of providing for or seek- 
ing after. Because we cannot demonstrate to sight or feel the 
laceration or rupture that has taken place, we are apt to fancy or 
frame some other cause for the lameness ; and the horse, through 
being laid up, in time recovers, and we, continuing in the belief 
that our supposition was correct, are left uninformed of the true 
cause of the lameness, notwithstanding the horse has got sound 
again. 
The usual way in which such lamenesses have their origin 
appears to be during some act of hard galloping or leaping; — step- 
ping unguardedly into a rabbit-hole, or upon some surface which 
gives way under the animal’s weight. The horse immediately, or 
soon afterwards, falls “ dead lame;” he can hardly limp, perhaps, 
out of the field or wood in which he happens at the moment to be 
going. He is said to have “ sprained ” his leg ; but no sign of 
sprain is to be found. Perhaps, it is thought, he may have “picked 
up something” in his foot ; but examination of that part is attended 
with no better success than the search after sprain. The case is 
vexatiously obscure : nothing can be seen, nothing felt, to account 
for the lameness. If the ailing member be a fore leg — as most 
probably it is — the limb is taken up into the arms of the examiner 
with a firm and close grasp, so as to enable him to swing it back- 
ward and forward ; and he fancies one or both of these motions 
“ hurts” the horse : still, there is nothing to make him quite certain 
that the horse, from such rough handling, does not feign being 
hurt ; or that he in reality is not hurt, not in consequence of any 
lesion of muscle, but purely from the ordeal the examiner is put- 
ting him through. Still, however, I do not mean to deny that 
there may and do occur cases in which laceration or rupture, or 
other lesion of muscular fibre, if it exist, is likely to be discovered 
by manual examination of this and other kind, though a good deal 
in all cases of muscular rend or hurt must be determined through 
observation of the alteration occasioned by the lesion in the horse’s 
action. 
Some years ago a very remarkable — indeed, as I thought at the 
time of its occurrence, an unique — case of ruptured muscle hap- 
pened in my practice ; but I have since found that so far from the 
case, rare as it may be, being unparalleled, we have only to turn 
over the leaves of Solleysel to meet with accounts of what appear 
