576 
LAMINITIS AND NAVICULAR DISEASE. 
NAVICULAR DISEASE. 
This disease also, in my opinion, not unfrequently arises 
from congenital predisposition. Generally speaking, it is the 
high-stepper, the good goer, that becomes the victim of the 
affection. It is a fact well attested that navicular disease as 
frequently develops itself in feet with wide frogs and bulbous 
heels, or in shallow heels and flattish feet, as in narrow, up¬ 
right feet. Contraction, so far from being a necessary indi¬ 
cation of the disease, follows almost as a matter of certainty 
upon any lameness, wherever situated, which necessitates an 
absence of the natural pressure and weight being thrown 
upon the heels of the foot. This is clearly proved; for after 
neurotomy, the pain being removed, and the weight being 
again thrown upon the heels, the foot expands, notwithstand¬ 
ing that the disease is still going on in it. I am satisfied, 
from numerous 'post-mortem examinations, that there are 
numbers of cases of lameness that would be pronounced to 
be due to chronic navicular disease by practical men, in 
which neither the navicular ligaments nor true navicular 
joint—the foot-joint capsule—are diseased, nor have they 
been at any antecedent period actively inflamed, but where 
the internal structure of the navicular bone has been absorbed 
and become hollow. The change that has been going on is 
“ fragilitas, 5 ' a state differing very greatly from mollities, since 
we nearly always find a great proneness to the formation of 
exostosis, spavins, and spents, See. &c., in animals of this 
special tendency. I have known foals born of defective 
parents in whom this condition was so strongly developed 
that all men would at once pronounce them to be affected 
with navicular disease, and such lamenesses were permanent. 
I am persuaded that the structure of the bones is in a de¬ 
fective state, and that, if their true condition could be fully 
ascertained, the animal would, to all intents and purposes, be 
pronounced unsound, and this, too, probably many weeks or 
even months previous to lameness showing itself. Often at 
most it has been observed that he has been guilty of dropping 
occasionally for some time before he showed lameness. Is it 
not notorious that a horse shall show lameness for the first 
time the day after, or the day but one after, he has been 
newly shod, he having been standing idle for some time pre¬ 
viously, though no fault can in any way be attached to the 
shoeing ? Is it not equally notorious that a horse shall show 
lameness for the first time the day after, or day but one after, 
he has been “ramped about ” at a fair? I would here remark 
