ON HOCK LAMENESS. 
27 
and in so thinking 1 cannot see that I justly incur the charge of 
egotism. No opinions, however, were expressed by other writers. 
During this time many cases of obscure lameness came under my 
notice, some of which I had an opportunity of examining after 
death; and although I cannot assert that I paid critical attention to 
every individual nerve, vein, and artery in the limb, yet I can take 
it upon myself to say, that I gave the parts such a fair examina¬ 
tion as would have satisfied most scientific surgeons. The result of 
these examinations discovered the lesions I have pointed out, and 
no others, and many of these cases were related in our periodical. 
Now, in making these communications I perceive that 1 have con¬ 
fined myself too much to the bare and meagre statement of facts, 
and in none of them has it been my object to build up a Jine- 
spun theory. 
The last of these communications elicits a paper from Mr. 
Dick, in which he denies in toto that any of the cases I have 
mentioned are cases of disease. His grounds for so doing ap¬ 
pear to be, his having found grooves or indentations at the situ¬ 
ation I had pointed out, and which appearances he immediately 
concludes are exactly alike and in every respect the same as those 
mentioned by me. Now', does it not strike the clear-headed 
reader, that before Mr. Dick takes upon himself to make the many 
flat contradictions contained in his first paper, he should have 
better satisfied himself and his readers that we were both ar¬ 
guing on the same thing, and that his oil-cisterns and the abra¬ 
sions I spoke of were precisely the same? But this is not the 
only instance of Mr. Dick jumping to his conclusions rather too 
hastily, and drawing his premises from his own imagination, and 
then reasoning upon them. To shew this I have only to refer 
to the fourth page of Mr. Dick’s last paper, in which he says, re¬ 
ferring to myself, ‘‘ he looks at those cases only where he supposes 
he will find what he wants.” Now, what right has Mr. Dick to 
make such an assertion ? How can he possibly know that my ex¬ 
amination has been limited to such cases? In no one of my 
papers have 1 given the slightest ground for such an idea being 
formed. Again, Mr. D. says just afterwards, But did it never 
occur to Mr. Spooner that it might be as well to examine a few 
sound hocks, lest that which he supposes to be disease should 
turn out, as I have asserted, a healthy structure ?” A few 
healthy hocks, indeed!—why I have examined nearly every one 
that I have had an opportunity of examining. But surely it 
is jumping to a conclusion with a vengeance to suppose, much 
more to assert, that a person must necessarily be ignorant of 
every thing that he docs not state in print. I have made no 
