STRUCTURE AND DISEASES OF THE HORSE’S FOOT. 3738 
sensitive and horny sole and frog. After atime a foul fungus sprouts 
from the ulcerations, accompanied with exceedingly disagreeable dis- 
charge. The horn of the sole and frog becomes disorganized, and breaks 
down. Thefungoid granulations, with the constitutional depravity which 
predisposes to them, constitute the disease. 
The treatment consists in the removal, by the knife, of all the detached 
horn, together with as much of the fungoid tissue as can be removed 
without “the loss of too much blood, and the application of astringents 
and mild caustics, so applied as to remove the remaining fungus and to 
change the action of the part. Constitutional treatment, tonics, and 
alteratives, with good care and nutritious food, will do much i in causing 
a successful issue. 
It is believed that much of the obseure lameness to which horses some- 
what advanced in years, and especially those that have had much 
severe driving and work, are subjected, is rheumatic. From the nature 
of the tissue composing the sensitive foot, so largely fibrous as it is, we 
might anticipate that from long-continued ‘hard usage there would arise a 
degree of irritability in that tissue that would cause lameness. This con- 
dition must not be confounded with acute rheumatic fever, to which 
horses are sometimes subject, and which is a different disease. The 
disease of which I speak in this connection is an irritability and painful 
condition of the fibrous tissue, without any of the products or results of 
the inflammatory action. 
The animal should be housed in a dry and airy stable, but sheltered 
from draughts of air, and should be blanketed. The feet should be 
treated to a warm bath, and then be rubbed dry, and have an application 
of Fahnestock’s liniment, and be bandaged. At the same time there 
may be given daily in meal an ounce of acetate of potash, with a 
seruple of powdered colchicum; or a draught of the following: iodide 
of potassium, two ounces; liquor potasse, one quart; of which two 
. tablespoonfuls may be given, night and morning, in a pint of water or 
mixed with feed. 
There are several diseased conditions which manifest themselves in 
the horny foot. Of these the most important are the flat or convex sole, 
or the pumice-foot, and the sand-crack. The false quarter is in no very 
great degree different from the sand-ecrack. All disease or malformations 
of the horn must originate in injury or in disease of the soft tissues from 
which the horn is a secretion. 
The pumice-foot, which consists in a falling of the sole to a level with 
the solar border of the wall, or even so as to constitute a convex surface, 
is usually preceded and caused either by a destruction of the elastic 
lamin® attaching the coffin-bone to the horn, or to an elongation of the 
same, or else to a softening, spreading, and flattening of the entire hoof. 
Animals with natural flat feet—those that have been bred on marshy 
land, where their feet have been kept soft, are most liable to exhibit this 
form. Probably nothing can restore this kind of foot; but care in shoe- 
ing may enable the animal to be of some service. 
‘Sand-crack is a fissure in the hoof, which begins at the caronet, the 
thin edge first breaking away. It is a disease of nutrition, the horn of 
the foot being secreted in diminished quantity and impaired quality. The 
break, small : at first, is extended until it may divide the entire hoof. It 
usually 0 occurs in the quarter, and perhaps most frequently at the inner 
quarter. It has been asserted that the whole difficulty is produced by 
bad shoeing. Low condition, impure state of the blood, and lack of 
care are predisposing causes. In this conjuncture slig oht injury to the 
