LAMINIT1S AND NAVICULAR DISEASE, 
819 
What is Rheumatism ? 
This disease is not, strictly speaking, peculiar to itself. It 
partakes of, and is confounded in some of the characteristics 
of inflammation. It partakes of both the acute and chronic 
form, but its attacks are always confined to the white fibrous 
j * 
tissues. Its great distinctive peculiarity is its remarkable 
migratory or oscillatory characteristic, and it is conceded by 
all pathologists to have a constitutional ,if not an hereditary, 
origin; it differs from inflammation in its nature, not being 
reducible or removed by the same treatment, neither is it 
the same in its terminations, scarcely ever producing suppu¬ 
ration or destruction of the tissues attacked. The most reliable 
knowledge we can acquire of its nature and effects is from 
our fellow-man who may be the victim to it; he can tell us with 
almost unerring certainty when a change in the weather is 
about to take place. The morbid susceptibility of the affected 
tissues are so acute and delicate as to be acted upon by con¬ 
ditions which are wholly inappreciable to our senses; but to 
assume that the increase or decrease of pain and lameness is 
caused by the change of the weather, or to some slight dis¬ 
ordered state of the digestive organs, is, to my mind, very 
inconclusive indeed. I am rather inclined to the opinion 
that the one primary cause—whether it be a peculiar electrical 
state of the atmosphere, or whatever else it may be—that 
brings about the change in the weather, affects in like 
manner man and animal that is the subject of this peculiar 
disease. 
Is Navicular Disease of an Inflammatory Nature ? 
I have studied carefully the character of navicular disease—• 
its stealthy, subtle progress; its concealed advances. I have 
seen it in foals and in colts unshod. In others it has 
made itself patent during breaking. In plenty of cases I have 
felt quite satisfied that no injury to the joint or laceration of 
the fibres of the tendons had taken place; no laceration 
of fibre could possibly have ever occurred, but simply and 
purely a radically defective condition of the bones, and the liga¬ 
ments connecting the bones together. The theory of rubbed- 
off cartilage is very ingenious ; but I have seen colts perfectly 
free from lameness or navicular disease, and whose navicular 
bones were covered with the small nodules of bone of the size 
of millet-seeds you speak of, in which there was a perfect 
absence of inflammation. In all cases of navicular disease you 
have stiffness and rigidity of the ligaments, and in many cases 
