STRING HALT. 
603 
singular name of Stritighalt. One or both hind legs are caught 
up at every step with great rapidity and violence, so that the fet¬ 
lock sometimes almost touches the belly ; but, after the horse 
has been out a little while, this usually goes off, and the natural 
action of the animal returns. In a few cases it does not per¬ 
fectly disappear after exercise, but the horse remains a little 
lame. 
ISlature of Stringhalt. —There can be no reasonable doubt as 
to the nature of the disease. It is not a perfectly involuntary 
action of a certain muscle, or a certain set of muscles. The limb 
is flexed at the command of the will; but it acts to a greater ex¬ 
tent, and with greater violence, than the will had prompted. 
There is an accumulation of excitability in the muscle : the im¬ 
pulse that should have called it into natural and moderate action 
causes it to take on a spasmodic, perhaps painful one. 
Cause. —How many ingenious but contradictory theories have 
been advanced, in order to account for this peculiarity of gait. 
The muscles—which of them are concerned? Clearly those by 
which the thigh is brought under the belly, and the hock is 
flexed, and the pasterns are first flexed and then extended. But 
by which of them is the effect principally produced ? When there 
is such an unnatural contradictory combination of action—if you 
will forgive the expression—such flexions, and extensions, and 
rotations, as are never seen in the natural play, whether simple 
or combined, of any of these muscles, it would be almost folly to 
attempt to guess at the one principally concerned. 
Dissection. —The hind extremities of a horse that had string- 
halt must ever be a valuable subject of minute dissection. It is 
not always easy to obtain the opportunity of dissecting such 
a horse. Some veterinarians, however, much to their credit, 
have sought for, and diligently availed themselves of the oppor¬ 
tunity. But what has been the result? The greater number of 
inquirers thus employed have found no lesion at all. 
Melanosis. —One gentleman, and his opinion deserves atten¬ 
tion, attributes it to melanosis. This is a deposit of the carbona¬ 
ceous matter of the blood, either on the faschiae of the muscles, 
or infiltrated into their substance; or, now and then, enclosed in 
a minute portion of cellular tissue, and assuming the form of a 
tumour ; not always, or often, the consequence of injury, or 
producing much injury; but much more frequently a mere 
chemical effect—a deposition of one of the constituents of the 
blood. Melanosis has often enouffh been found in the horse 
without this morbid nervous affection of the parts on which the 
deposit was lodged ; and comparatively few horses that had been 
