Natural to its situation and use

Natural to its situation and use

Natural to its situation and use

The greater liability of the foot than of any other part of the extremities to injury from casualties, natural to its situation and use, should always suggest the beginning of an inquiry, especially in an obscure case of lameness at that point. Indeed the lameness may have an apparent location elsewhere when that is the true seat of the trouble, and the surgeon who, while examining his lame patient, discovers a ringbone, and convincing himself that he has encountered the cause of the disordered action suspends his investigation without subjecting the foot to a close scrutiny, at a later day when regrets will avail nothing, may deeply regret his neglect and inadvertence. As in human pathological experience, however, there are instances when inscrutable diseases will deliver their fatal messages, while leaving no mark and making no sign by which they might be identified and classified, so it will happen that in the humbler animals the onset and progress of mysterious and unrecognizable ailments will at times baffle the most skilled veterinarian, and leave our burden-bearing servants to succumb to the inevitable, and suffer and perish in unrelieved distress.