2 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
galls no way injure the limb nor detract from the sterling value of 
the animal. They most assuredly are, in horses of a certain age, 
or that have performed any great deal of labour, to be viewed as 
“ signs of work at the same time, in the usual condition of such 
swellings, the limbs appear to act as freely and as firmly with as 
without them, and horses that have them in all their legs continue 
working for years without manifesting any complaint or indication 
of failure. 
Connected in one instance, as windgalls are, with joints, in another 
with tendons, in another again with ligaments, use and sprain and 
contorsion of such parts must, of course, more or less affect them : 
indeed, under such circumstances it is that they oftentimes take 
their rise, and at all times become aggravated and magnified. And 
cases of this description do occur in which inflammation arising in 
contiguous parts extends to the bursae, and implicates the windgalls 
in the cause of the pain and the lameness, in consequence of its ren¬ 
dering them sensitive and tender on pressure or motion. In sprains 
of the fetlock joint, and of the back sinews and suspensory liga¬ 
ment, this, we know, not infrequently takes place. 
Under such circumstances as we have just described, or from 
repeated hard work, windgalls originally attracting no particular 
attention from their magnitude, will frequently acquire very large 
volume, and other parts of similar structure in their immediate 
vicinity will take on the same morbid action. Thus, windgalls 
about the fetlock now and then, in horses hard-worked or strained, 
extend high up the back of the leg, in consequence of the sheath 
of the flexor tendons participating in the same dropsical action. 
Whether any rupture of the original windgall happens, and so com¬ 
munication be established between it and the new-formed tumour, 
is a question in our mind still unsettled for want of a fitting sub¬ 
ject for dissection. It is notorious enough, that there is a great 
deal of variation in the bulk of such large swellings, as there is, 
indeed, to some extent, in certain ordinary forms of windgalls, they 
being larger after work than at other times; hence it is we hear a 
person say, his horse’s windgalls after work “ run up to the hock:” 
owing, we repeat, to the implication of the vagina of the tendons. 
Now, in cases of this kind, it is very possible tenderness and stiff¬ 
ness, or even lameness, perhaps, may be observed, and be referrible 
to the enlarged and distended windgalls: there will be evinced a 
flinching and catching-up of the limb when the tumours are 
handled, and an uneasiness in standing manifested the day after 
the work by resting first one leg and then the other. Aged horses 
that have in their day worked hard are very apt to evince this sort 
of renewed irritation in their chronic and morbidly altered wind¬ 
galls. Old coachers and posters afford evidence enough of this. 
