VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 55 
dered as obscure at the time of purchase, and in that case the 
horse might be returned. 
A horse has a deformed hock—it is double its natural size— 
on several parts of it there exist prominences, anormal, irregular, 
hard, insensible to the touch, and without heat. He carries on 
his hock a considerable mass of periosteal growth—he has a 
bone spavin, a curb, or a splent, apparent enough to the most 
careless observer. The horse is lame in this limb. The lameness 
is intermittent. The limb, carefully examined, presents no other 
lesion w'hich would be the cause of lameness. He was not lame 
when he \vas bought; but it is plain that the periosteum, unna¬ 
turally extended around the articulations of the hock, is the cause 
of the present lameness. What right can the person who has 
purchased such a horse have to return it on the seller? The 
lameness was nothing more than one of the probable or necessary 
consequences of the injury of the hock; an injury that was suffi¬ 
ciently apparent by other and not equivocal signs. The vender 
has a right to maintain, that when he sold a horse with a hock 
so deformed, he could not be compelled to give a warranty 
against that w hich w as the natural consequence of this deformity, 
and visible to every eye at the moment of sale. 
In such circumstances it is not sufficient to say that it was an 
old lamenessf in order to be enabled to return the horse. 
Many veterinarians, however, are of a contrary opinion. They 
say that an animal has, in technical language,an old lameness,’’ 
when that lameness is intermittent; and whether the cause of it 
is apparent or not; because,” say they, or, at least, so I have 
heard them explain the matter, “ a horse w'ith bony enlargements 
about the hock is not necessarily lame, and the buyer, who does 
not see him lame, thinks that he is purchasing a horse with 
spavin, or curb, &c., but not with intermittent lameness; and, 
therefore, is so far injured by ihe vender.” This reasoning is 
specious, but it will not bear close examination. It cannot for a 
moment be sustained, that when a person buys a horse with the 
knowledge (for that is always supposed) that he has spavin, or 
curb, or splent, he can justly complain, or wish to return the 
horse, on account of any of the natural or probable consequences 
of those diseases. 
If I wished to maintain an opinion contrary to that which I 
have now' expressed, I might, |)erhaps, demand of him who told 
me that the intermittent or occasional lameness of the horse pro¬ 
ceeded from the visible bony enlargements, whether it might not 
possibly be the symptom of some other lesion not apparent. It 
would be impossible for him to deny that this might be the case. 
There would be some slight shadow of ])ropriety in this mode of 
reasoning, because, unless, in very peculiar circumstances, we can 
appreciate the physical effects of certain lesions, there is nothing 
