254 THE HORSE. 
produces the opposite evil in the shape of thrush. A mixture of equal 
parts of cow-dung and clay may be used every night with advantage, and 
this I believe to be the best of all stoppings. It should be kept in a 
strong box of wood, about a foot long and eight inches wide, with a 
handle across the top, and it should be applied the last thing at night to 
the soles of the fore feet only, by means of a thin piece of wood, a foot 
long and a couple of inches wide, with which the space within the shoe is 
completely stuffed. If the feet are obstinately dry, in spite of repeated 
stoppings with cow-dung alone, which will rarely be the case, a table- 
spoonful of salt may be added to the cow-dung, and this will never fail. For 
most horses stopping with cow-dung alone once a week is sufficient, but 
the groom can judge for himself, by their appearance, of the number of 
stoppings required. If three parts of cow-dung and one of clay are used, 
the feet may be stopped twice a week, or, perhaps, every other night, and if 
equal parts of each are adopted as the composition, almost any feet will 
bear being stopped every other night, with the exception of flat or 
pumiced soles, which should never be stopped at all. On the night before 
shoeing, every horse, even if he has flat soles, will be the better for having 
his feet stopped, the application softening the horn so as to allow the 
smith to use his knife to slice it without breaking it into crumbling frag- 
ments. Several patents have been taken out for felt pads, to be soaked 
in water, and then inserted in the holiow of the shoe, but they do not 
answer nearly so well as cow-dung stopping, which has far more emollient 
qualities than mere water. I believe nothing has yet been discovered 
which has qualities at all equal to this old-fashioned natural remedy. 
THRUSHES are prevented by keeping the frogs free from ragged layers 
of the elastic substance of which they are partly composed, and at the 
same time by maintaining a dry state of the litter on which the horse 
stands. I am not now considering the management of the horse at grass. 
where thrushes are generally produced when the weather is very wet, or 
when the pasture is of too marshy a character, but the frogs of the stabled 
horse, which ought never to be allowed to be so moist as to become 
decomposed. Some ulcerated conditions of the frog which are still 
considered to come under the general denomination “thrush,” are due to 
severe internal disease of the bones of the foot, and are not caused by 
moisture at all. Still these are rare exceptions, and the ordinary thrush 
of the stable may be considered as invariably caused in the latter way. 
Cases are also occasionally to be met with, in which, from general gross- 
ness of the system, the sensible frog throws off part of its horny covering, 
and secretes a foul matter instead. The management of these diseased 
conditions comes within the province of the veterinarian, and I shall 
therefore not enter upon its consideration ; but the prevention of the mere 
decomposition of the external surface by moisture is a part of the duties 
of the groom, and so is the application of the proper remedies for it, as 
soon as the nature of the case is clearly made out. Here antiseptic 
astringents, which are quite out of place in inflammatory thrush, are the 
only useful applications, and by their means alone can the decomposition 
be stopped. Of these Sir W. Burnett’s solution of chloride of zinc is the 
best, but in mild cases, Condy’s fluid, which is the permanganate of potass, 
will answer well, and is not so poisonous in its nature if carelessly left 
about. Friar’s Balsam, with as much of the sulphate of zine dissolved in it 
as it will take up, is the old-fashioned grooms’ remedy for thrush, and a very 
good one it is if carefully insinuated into the cleft of the frog on a piece 
of tow wetted with it. The grand principle, however, is to prevent thrush 
