ON SOUNDNESS. 
143 
Next, you say, “ As for the question, whether a horse having 
one disease upon him at the time of sale is returnable for another 
that may supervene , I would resign this point entirely to the 
lawyers, as being more properly within their province than ours.” 
But I would not. So far from being within their exclusive pro¬ 
vince, I look upon it as a question whose merits must be sought 
after among ourselves; and one that, in common justice, belongs 
to medicine, not to law. 
Once more and I have done disputing. You seem to have 
misunderstood my object in treating of “ Blemishes.” It was 
not to introduce “ natural defects and deformities,” but “ alter¬ 
ations of the natural appearances of parts:” such as “broken 
knees;” “ scars upon the back, or shoulders, or withers and 
such like occurrences. Not lusus naturce. 
I have often imagined that a sort of table might prove useful 
to horsemen, and those who are not of the profession, show¬ 
ing the diseases, lamenesses, blemishes, vices, &c. of horses, in 
relation to two grand divisions — soundness and unsoundness. 
For the present, I will submit the following corollaries, drawn 
from my paper:— 
Every horse is to be regarded as unsound — 
1st. In a state of actual or recognised disease , bei t local, or be 
it constitutio?ial. 
2dly. In a state of actual lameness , either in one single limb 
or in the pair. 
3dly. In that state in which (although he is free both from 
disease and lameness) he is not equal to what by nature he ought 
to be adequate; or, in other words, in a state in which he, com¬ 
pared with another horse who is not in that state, labours under 
manifest unnatural incapacity . 
These I take to be the principles upon which such a table ought 
to be constructed. 
You may, I feel aware, now say to me, that, at least, my 
second corollary is comprehended in my third. I admit it is; 
and my first too, in pari, but only in part; for there are, as you 
know, several diseases which do not incapacitate , although some 
of them are serious evils. Chronic pjanders is one : manure, 
another. 
