134 
PATHOLOGY OP STRINGHALT. 
thyself.” I regret that my remarks were written in such a 
careless way as to give rise to doubts as to their true mean¬ 
ing. When I stated that my observations did not agree 
with Professor Spooner, or with Messrs. Goodwin, Percivall, or 
Youatt, I had reference only to the abnormal appearance that 
the scalpel presented to my view. I did not find the same 
lesions of structure seen and described by those gentlemen, 
but I did not for one moment doubt the fidelity of their 
dissections. They found disease of the spinal column, the 
spinal marrow, and sciatic nerve, and also of their coverings, 
and attributed to this condition of the parts the irritation 
which caused stringhalt. I detected none of the lesions 
above named, but found in an ulcerated condition the astra¬ 
galus and tibia. 
Plaving the Veterinarian in my possession from its first 
publication, and also the Veterinary Record and Review, and 
having likewise the works of Percivall, Goodwin, Blaine, 
Youatt, B. Clark, Coleman, Gamgee, and some two hundred 
and fifty other works on veterinary science, in the English 
language, and nearly as many more in the French, German, 
Italian, and Spanish languages, I could not be ignorant that 
ulceration of the astragalus was known to the profession. It 
was not to the existence of the ulceration that I desired to 
direct attention, but to the nature of the ulcer. The French, 
for many years before Messrs. Percivall, Spooner, and Good¬ 
win, made known the result of their observations, and attri¬ 
buted stringhalt to a diseased condition of the hock. They 
describe it as eparvin sec, and call the spasmodic action 
harper. Bigot says it is caused by friction between the 
astragalus and tibia, and I have good reason to believe this 
opinion is still held by some of the best veterinary surgeons 
in France. From the opinions entertained by the French, 
from the fact also that ulceration sometimes exists without 
producing stringhalt, and from the further fact that man, in 
certain diseases of the articulations, is subject to spasm of the 
limb, the idea—whether worthy of anything or not—suggested 
itself to my mind that stringhalt might have its origin in an 
irritable condition of the ulcer: and I do not know any 
good reason why diseased bone and cartilage should not have 
their benign and their irritable form of ulcer, as well as other 
tissues of the body. If any of your readers should call upon 
me to point out the difference between the two forms of 
ulcer, permit me to refer them to structural anatomists, as 
the practical surgeon has not as yet been enlightened by 
them on this point. 
I agree with Professor Yarnell in all that he says in 
