328 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
and entering into correspondence with Alison, requests him to do 
the same ; Alison refuses, never having known the horse to be 
lame, and thereupon issue is joined. Smart, as plaintiff, must, of 
course, prove that the lameness, or the disease that caused the 
lameness, existed at the time he purchased the horse, and for this 
purpose he brings no less than seven veterinary surgeons, all com¬ 
petent men, who unanimously swear the horse is suffering from 
chronic laminitis. Now, any one would think there could be no 
answer to this case : not so, however, thought the counsel for the 
defence; he was evidently tolerably master of the subject in dis¬ 
pute—he had an idea that chronic must succeed acute, and that if 
a horse had been suffering from acute laminitis, he must at some 
period of his life or other have been for a considerable length of 
time very lame ; and such, in fact, was his answer, in which he 
endeavoured to prove by the man who shod the horse, the groom 
who looked after him, and other witnesses, that the horse had never 
been lame for any length of time, and in consequence could never 
have had acute laminitis, ergo, the disease never could have become 
chronic. All the professional evidence he chose to call was not a 
veterinary surgeon who had seen the horse, because he knew such 
a witness in his cross-examination must have admitted that such 
feet as the animal in question possessed were what, in all pro¬ 
bability, could not have been warranted sound, laminitis or no 
laminitis; but one who could merely reiterate his argument, that 
a horse could not be suffering from chronic laminitis who had 
never had acute. The plaintiff got a verdict for the damages he 
claimed, and I think justly so; and so the case ended. But as re¬ 
gards the profession' I am of opinion we may carry the case a 
little farther. Assuming the horse never to have been lame long 
enough to have had acute laminitis, which I think we may believe 
from the number and respectability of the witnesses who swore 
to that fact, and no witnesses on the other side were called to 
prove he had, the question arises (professionally not legally), was 
he suffering from chronic laminitis, and, if so, what is chronic 
laminitisl To answer this question at any length would carry us 
beyond the limits prescribed by this paper, and be rather beside 
its purpose. It is understood, popularly, to be that state of hoof 
in which the disease in its acute form has destroyed the laminae 
in front of the foot, left a convexity of the sole between the toe 
and the point of the frog, &c.; medically, and strictly speaking, 
we know we may and do have chronic or sub-acute inflamma¬ 
tion of the laminae or any other part, that is not preceded by the 
acute stage, and it is possible : in fact, we have no right to dis¬ 
pute the correctness of the professional evidence, that in this case 
such chronic inflammation did exist, although how it is to be 
distinguished from the inflammation in the sole or other parts of 
