By rickets is understood a soft and weak condition of the bones, in which the lime is deficient; the gelatine comprising their framework having no proper support, they bend in any direction which the superincumbent weight may give them. Hence we so often 359 see puppies which are confined to their kennels with bandy legs. This is usually the first sign of rickets. Sometimes the shins bend forward, producing what is called the "buck-shin," but whether the legs bow outwards or forwards the cause is the same. The remedy is country air, exercise, and good food; quinine and steel pills, ordered for poverty of blood, will also prove beneficial. Enlarged joints may be merely a sign of excessive vigor in the formation of the bone. But there is to be met with a scrofulous enlargement of the joints, which is seldom got rid of. This scrofulous enlargement may occur in the knees, hocks, or stifles, but the last-named joints are usually the seats of the disease. Sometimes nature rallies and throws off this tendency to scrofula, but more frequently the joints become larger and larger, the lameness increases, and, in most cases nothing is left but to kill the sufferer.