CHRONIC AND INCURABLE LAMENESSES IN HORSES. 251 
dons, or suspensory ligaments, or lameness of the pastern 
joints, or navicular or coffin lameness, or acute inflammation of the 
laminae, spine affections, injury of the patella or stifle, and of 
all the diseases incidental to the hock, See. Sec.; it is that 
violent battering which the parts receive while travelling with 
such rapidity over our hard roads, or from the jars the parts 
must necessarily receive from leaping, even when the most 
careful and sportsman-like conduct is observed. 
With respect to the medical primary treatment of the whole 
of the cases I have mentioned, bloodletting either general or 
local, either sedative applications of a cold discutient nature, or, 
if the case indicates it, warm relaxing fomentations and rest, 
stand pre-eminent. It is not my intention to enter into the 
minutiae of the treatment of each particular case ; I am looking 
at lameness in a general point of view. I have said that the 
second great cause of so many incurable lame horses, is, an in¬ 
sufficiency of rest after the lameness is removed. This I am con¬ 
fident cannot be the fault of the practitioner; it wholly arises 
from a mistaken savingness of the proprietor : “ he cannot bear 
to see his horse standing in the stable, eating his head off,” 
quoth he, and actually has recourse to the most expensive step 
he could take, very frequently to the total destruction of the 
animal’s usefulness, by compelling him to resume his accustomed 
labours immediately after the cessation of the lameness. Such 
an act must be done without a moment’s thought or rea¬ 
son. Does he suppose that the very moment that the patient 
ceases to evince pain by his gait, after a violent lameness, 
the complicated structure so lately disarranged is as capable 
of being battered with impunity , as before the violence done to 
them ? and does he reflect that such treatment is almost sure to 
occasion a recurrence, which is more troublesome to remove than 
the primary lameness, but which not being of so acute a form, 
the proprietor irritably exclaims, “ I shall work him sound? ” He 
works the poor animal, lame and in pain, until he is sick of seeing 
him, or ashamed of being seen using him; at last sells him for 
what he can get; or perchance acts still more humanely by 
sending for the slaughterer, to make food, perhaps, for the very 
hounds, he, but a short time previously, so nobly and proudly 
followed. 
Again; sportsmen and horse proprietors should bear in mind 
that long-continued inflammation in any part, more especially in 
parts connected with the foot and leg of the horse, is sure to 
engender an alteration of structure, and necessarily imperfect 
action, which, in a multitude of cases, is never to be removed. 
All this is their own seeking: they must not blame the practitioner. 
