VETERINARY MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 109 
excluding the possibility of the lameness having been contracted 
during that period. 3d. The evidence of the witnesses who 
saw her on the 20th, and afterwards at lypOrigor’s, and who 
think that the lameness was not the result of any recent injury, 
but must have been of some standing. 4th.—The evidence of 
Thomas Smith, a man of skill, who examined her in November, 
1827, when in the possession of Mr. Duff; and who says, that 
he discovered a rupture of the extensory tendons of the hind leg, 
and which he thinks had existed for four months at least prior 
to his inspection, which brings it to two months at least prior to 
the sale. 
This evidence, so far as it consists of evidence of opinion, is 
liable to the following observations: 1st. The opinion of the 
persons who saw the mare at M^Grigor’s, in regard to the en¬ 
durance of the lameness, is, for the most part, not the opinion 
of persons of skill, and is wholly rested on the absence of any 
proof or visible mark of recent external violence. But, accord¬ 
ing to the evidence of Smith, the man of skill, the rupture 
might have been occasioned by a blow, and might also have 
been occasioned by a sprain or jerk ; so that the absence of any 
external mark is no proof that the injury was not recent. 2d.— 
The appearance of the limb on the 20th was consistent with 
what Mr. Smith describes as the immediate consequence of a 
rupture of the tendons, when he says, that “ swelling of the 
limb always ensues immediately after a rupture of the extensory 
tendons while, on the other hand, the lameness which existed 
on the 20th, and on account of which the mare was offered back, 
is not proved to have been a probable consequence of a rupture 
of the tendon existing two months previously : on the contrary, 
Mr. Smith says he does not think it possible for a horse, 
having a rupture of the extensory tendons, to travel a distance 
of fifteen or twenty miles without a swelling arising on the limb 
sufficient to indicate the existence of the rupture; and by this 
he means not a general swellings which will go off by exercise, 
but a swelling which will indicate a rupture to a professional 
man only.” Now this mare had travelled nineteen miles in the 
morning, and had stood all day in the market; and there is no 
proof of any swelling in the course of that day, or in the even¬ 
ing : and the swelling which appeared next day is not such a 
swelling as Mr. Smith describes as indicating a rupture to a 
professional man only,” but is the opposite kind of swelling, 
which he describes as a “ general swelling,” obvious to the eye 
of the unskdied, and affecting the whole limb, from the hoof to 
the knee. Hence there is some reason for inferring, cither tliut 
if the swelling, which arose during the night of the 19th and 
VOI,. VIII. Q 
