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VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
referred at the last meeting confirmed him in this opinion. The 
alteration of structure occurs after the disease; and therefore it 
does require more than usual “tact, talent, and discrimination,” 
to find out what will be the future state of the foot. Mr. Turner 
had asserted that he did not resort to the proper means to ascer¬ 
tain the real state of the feet. He affirmed that he did. He had 
both feet well pared out, and he very carefully examined them. 
Mr. Turner must not imagine that because there is a difference in 
the feet, there must be disease in one of them. Few horses have 
both feet perfectly alike. He recollected a stallion that had one 
upright and one concave foot, and that was never lame. His 
progeny had the same peculiarity, and without lameness. Mr. Tur¬ 
ner had then referred to what had been said of his operation for 
the supposed unfettering of the navicular bone, and now illus¬ 
trated the removal of the bar and crust on one side, by the loosen¬ 
ing of one side of a vice, by which any interposed substance was 
liberated. The cases, Mr. Goodwin said, were not analagous, for 
there would remain the bar on the other side to keep up the bone; 
and therefore the descent, if such there was, would be an irre¬ 
gular one, and worse than no descent at all. 
Mr. W. Percivall. —Mr. Turner should first prove to us that 
there is contraction as a cause of navicular disease, and then that 
there is actual displacement. 
Mr. Turner then produced some specimens, one of a healthy 
foot with the natural situation of the coffin bone, and another of a 
foot in which the navicular disease had appeared, and where the 
coffin bone was perceptibly elevated. 
Mr. W. Percivall .—Admitting; for a moment that there is here 
actual displacement, what does Mr. Turner mean ? Is the coffin 
bone actually shoved up into the hoof? Does it occupy a different 
situation from that which it naturally fills ? 
Mr. Turner .—The coffin bone is suspended in the hoof, by 
some hundred elastic springs: when the horse is in motion, these 
springs are continually elongating and contracting; but if he is at 
rest for a considerable time, and no force is applied in addition to 
his simple weight, they become partially fixed; and then, the 
animal feeling pain in the posterior part of the foot, a bias is given 
to the front of the foot, and the heels of the coffin bone are ele¬ 
vated in the horny box, and farther removed from the ground. 
Mr. W. Percivall .—This is no answer to my question. Mr. 
Turner has just shewn us two specimens, in one of which the cof¬ 
fin bone appears to be higher than in the other. Does he mean 
to say that the laminse have slid upon each other, and that the 
coffin bone is actually raised ? 
Mr. J. Tin ner .—There is no disunion between the laminae, but, 
