THE SEEDY TOE. 543 
exercise at the end of that time, I have succeeded in restoring an elastic 
condition of the foot; but I have never known one so patched up bear 
hard work, and I should never advise the risk incurred by submitting 
him to it. Hunting and racing, or, indeed, any kind of work on soft 
ground will do no harm ; but battering on the roads, especially without 
leather, applied as above described, is sure to bring back the inflammation. 
THE SEEDY TOE. 
TuHIs TERM is so generally employed among horsemen, that though the 
state which it describes is one of the ordinary consequences of laminitis, 
I prefer to give it a distinct section. I have already described its nature 
in the preceding page, and have only now to allude to its treatment. This 
may generally be so conducted as to restore the shape of the foot, if the 
inflammation has not lowered the toe of the pedal bone, as shown at 
fig. 1; for if this has taken place, although it is perhaps possible to get rid 
of the cavities in the horn, the relative positions of the bony parts cannot 
be changed. When, however, as is often the case, a moderately small 
hollow has been formed between the layers of the wall, and the foot 
retains a tolerably healthy shape, by cutting away all the external horny 
walls, exposing the parts in contact with the lamine, and resting the 
horse in a loose box, the secreting surface will form a new wall, without 
any spongy texture, in the course of three or four months, if the coronary 
band is constantly stimulated by external applications. To effect this, the 
horse should be put to stand on red deal sawdust, without shoes ; and his 
coronets, after being gently stimulated by a mild liquid blister, should be 
kept dressed with tar ointment, which should also be applied to the 
exterior of the horn. It is seldom, however, that a foot which has been 
thus treated is sufficiently sound to bear hard work. 
CONTRACTION OF THE FOOT. 
THIS REPUTED DISEASE has been long the bugbear of the horsemaster ; 
but it is now discovered to be a complete mistake. Some of the most 
contracted feet in point of width are particularly free from all risk of 
disease, and on the other hand many open ones are as liable to it. The 
donkey, whose heels are shaped exactly like those of the contracted horse’s 
foot, is so seldom lame, that few can recall having seen one in that condi- 
tion, and, therefore, reasoning from analogy, one would be led to doubt 
that this shape renders the horse prone to lameness. At the same time it 
is quite true that in the disease which will next be investigated, the frog 
withers and contracts, and the heels are thereby drawn in; but here the 
contraction is a consequence and not a cause of disease, and certainly 
cannot be considered as a disease in itself. Bad shoeing will do much to 
cause cither laminitis or navicular disease, and it will certainly produce 
corns and inverted heels, but it will not waste the frog, or induce that 
condition of the foot where the sole is arched so high that the frog does 
not touch the ground when the shoe is off. Such a state of things can 
only be brought on either by thrush or navicular disease, and is never the 
result of the mechanical mismanagement of the foot, to which what used 
to be called contraction was generally attributed. All sorts of plans have 
been suggested for expanding the heels and for allowing them to expand ; 
but the real truth is that so long as the frog is sound and the parts above 
it, allowing the proper amount of pressure to be communicated to the sole, 
bars and heel of the crust, these latter divisions of the foot have no room 
to contract, and of a certainty they never do. 
