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The Country Gentlanaiis Magazine 



greatest value with equally extensive and 

 long-standing disease of their feet, because 

 those less esteemed, as well as horses used 

 for ordinary work, are usually put away when 

 no more service can be got out of them ; still, 

 the resolution is generally deferred until the 

 animal has endured much suffering, and is 

 only had recourse to after futile attempts to 

 cure have been made and much expenditure 

 incurred. In the case of thoroughbred stal- 

 lions, the sires of many winners, whose sub- 

 scription lists fill without there being any 

 need for them to travel, there are induce- 

 ments to keep them alive and obtain as many 

 fifty and hundred guinea fees as possible for 

 their services. 



Only a few horses, however, are endowed 

 with stamina, and other conditions enabling 

 them to survive years of suffering in their feet, 

 such as we have been contemplating. A re- 

 markable case, where death occurred to a cart 

 stallion, came under my own observation a few 

 years ago. The subject of it, a five-years-old 

 Clydesdale horse, was the property of a 

 nobleman at his estates in Ayrshire, and I 

 was summoned by telegram to attend the horse 

 when his death appeared imminent. I started 

 from Edinburgh by the earliest train, but it 

 was only at noon on the day after the mes- 

 sage was sent that I reached the castle, and 

 found that the horse had died during the 

 night. My mission so far reduced, I pro- 

 ceeded to examine the subject, and learn the 

 history of the case. The horse, a noble 

 specimen of its class, had been purchased of 

 3, farmer some twelve months prior to the 

 last crisis. The inflammation and suffering 

 in the feet had set in acutely about two 

 months before, and he had been unable to 

 stand for the three weeks or month previous 

 to his death. I found all four feet affected in this 

 case. Both the fore-feet exhibited depression 

 of the soles and ulceration of the pedal bones, 

 the last phenomenon being quite extraordinary 

 of its kind. I came to the decision that although 

 the early stage of the disease had been un- 

 observed, and the progress less rapid than 

 at the latter period, yet about a year must have 

 elapsed from the time the morbid change in 

 the feet had set in. At a later stage the course 



had been more rapid, one foot in succession 

 becoming acutely aftected until all four suf- 

 fered, when pain, general fever, the exhaus- 

 tion attending on them, and lastly, purulent 

 poisoning of the blood proved the cause of 

 death. 



I removed the feet from the subject, and 

 brought them to Edinburgh to dissect, which 

 I did with interest and most useful results, 

 devoting many weeks at intervals to the work. 

 The preparations themselves were so typical of 

 the origin and cause of the disease as to be 

 quite unsurpassed for the instruction afforded. 



Some readers may be inclined to question 

 the grounds for the similarity which I find 

 subsists between the cases of the horse first 

 noticed and that of the young Clydesdale 

 stallion. As a result, however, of my own 

 investigations on this subject, I have become 

 quite persuaded of the similarity or rather 

 identity in cause of the two cases. Those 

 members of the veterinary profession who 

 have read my papers in the Edinburgh 

 Veterinary Review^ will have some notion of 

 my views of the horse's foot — anatomical, 

 physiological, and pathological, relating to 

 subjects which must be worked out extensively, 

 and as thoroughly discussed, before much 

 useful knowledge can become sufticiently 

 widely disseminated. 



Atrophy of the pedal hone (or to be less 

 technical, luasting of the eoffin bone), is the 

 condition found in all these cases. This 

 wasting occurs at the bottom surface and on 

 the anterior and outer margin of that bone, 

 more commonly (for obvious reasons, which 

 need not here be discussed) in the fore-feet 

 than in hind, which, however, also, though 

 less extensively, suffer. 



Atrophy of the pedal bone happens to all 

 horses according to the prevalence and 

 urgency of the causes to which they are 

 exposed. It is, certainly, more prevalent in 

 England than, I believe, any other country 

 in the world. Effects only follow causes 

 in this as in other cases. It need scarcely be 

 said that the high qualities of a horse neither 

 diminish nor increase the chance of his be- 

 coming affected, except to the extent that 

 young horses, well managed from the first, are 



