The management and treatment of the horse in the stable, field, and ...

68 The Management and Treatment of the Horse,
cause has been a splint not larger than a grain of wheat
close up under the knee, and could be detected only
by an excited action of the pulse over the part affected.
This sort of thing often causes the groom and owner
much anxiety; knowing the horse to be lame and being
unable to find the cause, it is put down to everything
but the right. It will be called chest founder, chronic
founder, shoulder pitched, and many other things. When
a boy I once asked the late Professor Dick what was
chronic founder, and was told it was a very convenient
phrase to use when you have a horse lame in the foot
and cannot find the seat of lameness. "We call it," said the
Professor, " chronic founder, and send many fools away
satisfied." The symptoms of splint lameness are point-
ing the foot, resting the toe only upon the ground ;
the
horse has great difficulty in moving forward, cannot
bend its knee, but can go back, which a horse lame in
the shoulder cannot do. The cause of splint is the
formation of a tumour under the j^riasteum, or mem-
brane which covers the bone. During the growth of
the tumour this becomes stretched to an unnatural
degree, and causes the animal great pain, owing to the
sensitive nature of this covering. It is difficult to con-
ceive how splint should appear on the outside of the
small bones, except, we suppose, the space between these
bones is occupied by mechanism of an important charac-
ter. It is much easier to account for their almost
exclusive appearance on the inside of the limb, the inner
splint bone being situated nearer the central part of the
body than the other, and from the nature of its con-
nection with the knee it is subject to a greater