53 
THE NAVICULAR DISEASE, OR CHRONIC LAME¬ 
NESS IN THE FEET OF HORSES. 
By Mr. James Turner, Veterinary Surgeon, Regent 
Street , London. 
[Read at the Veterinary Medical Society, Dec. 24, 1828.] 
Gentlemen, 
I BEG leave to remark, that the paper which I am about to read, 
prior to that which is the subject of this evening’s discussion, is 
the copy of a few lines I had the honor ot addressing to Pro¬ 
fessor Coleman, and likewise to the Assistant Professor Sewell, 
of the Veterinary College, so far back as the year 1816, on the 
subject of Groggy Lameness in Horses, with the view of inviting 
their attention to a very frequent cause of foot lameness, which 
had never been adverted to by Professor Coleman in his lectures. 
I wish it, however, to be understood, Gentlemen, that this 
original paper contains only a brief sketch ot the impression 
winch the first sight of the disease had made on my mind; and 
although twelve years’ experience in active practice since that 
period have induced me to draw some other inferences, which 
may not exactly accord with the first manuscript, yet they will 
be seen to harmonize in the aggregate*. 
I believe I am correct when I state, that before the year 1816, 
the College Museum, splendid as it then was, contained but a 
solitary specimen of the navicular disease, and which was simply 
a diseased navicular bone, divested of its ligaments and tendon; 
but Mr. Coleman has, on several occasions since, candidly ac¬ 
knowledged in his lectures, that he had looked upon it previous 
to that time as a specimen of disease of very rare occurrence. I 
shall attempt to show that it is a very prevalent disease, and that 
it is the general cause oj the groggy foot lameness instead of the 
occasional chance , false-step disease, which some of the very old 
writers on farriery are said to have described nearly a century 
ago. That they took only a superficial view of this truly for¬ 
midable complaint, and altogether omitted to connect it with the 
general foot lameness, I think is quite manifest, or surely 1 
should not have it in my power to say, that not an author had 
reverted to it, from the laying of the first brick of the Veterinary 
* The important paper to which Mr. Turner here alludes, and which, in 
our opinion, fully establishes his claim as the first person who brought this 
disease fairly under the notice of the profession, we are reluctantly com¬ 
pelled, by the press of other matter, to omit. It shall be inserted at an 
early opportunity.— Lot ions. 
