This is an affection of the bones of the hock-joint. Spavined horses are generally capable of slow work. They are equal to the greater part of the work of the farm, and therefore they should not always be rejected by the small farmer, as they may generally be procured at a small price. These horses are not only capable of agricultural work, but they generally improve under it. The lameness in some degree abates, and even the bony tumor to a certain degree lessens. There is sufficient moderate motion and friction of the limb to rouse the absorbents to action, and cause them to take up a portion of the bony matter thrown out, but not enough to renew or prolong inflammation. It cannot be said that the plow affords a cure for spavin, but the spavined horse often materially improves while working at it. For fast work, and for work that must be regularly performed, spavined horses are not well calculated; for this lameness behind produces great difficulty in rising, and the consciousness that he will not be able to rise without painful effort, occasionally prevents the horse from lying down at all; and the animal that cannot rest well, cannot long travel far or fast.
Remedies.—The treatment of spavin is simple enough, but far from being always effectual. The owner of the horse will neither consult his own interest, nor the dictates of humanity, if he suffers the chisel and mallet, or the gimlet, or the pointed iron, or arsenic to be used; yet measures of considerable severity must be resorted to. Repeated blisters will usually cause either the absorption of the bony deposite, or the abatement or removal of the inflammation of the ligaments, or, as a last resource, the heated iron may be applied.
Swelled Legs.
The fore-legs, but oftener the hind ones, and especially in coarse horses, are sometimes subject to considerable enlargement. Occasionally, when the horse does not seem to labor under any other disease, and sometimes from an apparent shifting of disease from other parts, the hind legs suddenly swell to an enormous degree from the hock, and almost from the stifle to the fetlock, attended by a greater or less degree of heat, and tenderness of the skin, and sometimes excessive and very peculiar lameness. The pulse likewise becomes quick and hard, and the horse evidently labors under considerable
fever. It is acute inflammation of the cellular substance of the legs, and that most sudden in its attack, and most violent n its degree, and therefore attended by the effusion of a considerable quantity of fluid into the cellular membrane. It occurs in young horses, and in those which are over-fed and little exercised.
Remedies.—Fomentation, diuretics, or purgatives, or, if there is much fever, a moderate bleeding, will often relieve the distention almost as suddenly as it appeared. Mild cases will generally yield to their influence; but, if the animal has been neglected, the treatment must be decisive. If the horse is in high condition, these should be preceded or accompanied by bleeding; but if there are any symptoms of debility, bleeding would only increase the want of tone in the vessels.
Horses taken from grass and brought into close stables, very speedily have swelled legs, because the difference of food and increase of nutriment rapidly increase the quantity of the circulating fluid, while the want of exercise takes away the means by which it might be got rid of. The remedy here is sufficiently plain.
Swelled legs, however, may proceed from general debility. They may be the consequence of starvation, or disease that has considerably weakened the animal; and these parts, being farthest from the centre of circulation, are the first to show the loss of power by the accumulation of fluid in them. Here the means of cure would be to increase the general strength, with which the extremities would sympathize. Mild diuretics and tonics would therefore be evidently indicated.
Horses in the spring and fall are subject to swelled legs. The powers of the constitution are principally employed in providing a new coat for the animal, and the extremities have not their share of vital influence. Mingled cordials and diuretics are indicated here; the diuretic to lessen the quantity of the circulating fluid, and the cordial to invigorate the frame.