TREADS. 095 



and dead becomes well defined : instance, as a comparison, 

 a bad case of broken knee, where we often find our means 

 of perfect cure frustrated through some one having cut off 

 a piece of loose skin, which in the case, would have filled 

 up its former place, or at least, should have been left un- 

 touched, and if possible, restored. The same rule applies 

 to over-reach and all similar wounds. 



TREADS. 



Treads are accidents which commonly happen to horses 

 during the winter, when the heels of their shoes are turned 

 up and sharpened for frosty weather; they occur to draught- 

 horses almost exclusively. The character of a tread is a 

 wound on the coronet, involving a portion of the skin, and 

 usually more or less injury is done to the coronary band. 

 The locality is the inside or front of the foot. 



As it is known, any injury to the root of a finger or toe 

 nail is most painful, and of much consideration, when one 

 of similar extent in another part would be little heeded, 

 so with the foot of the horse. Structures of great import- 

 ance in the economy of the foot, and yet endowed with 

 little vascularity, are wounded in the case; reparation 

 is slow, and the wounds are very painful ; death in most 

 cases occurring to the skin at the part wounded. 



The horse should be at once put at rest, and the treat- 

 ment advised in the case of over-reach pursued. There is 

 this difference, however, between the two modes of injury, 

 that in treads, deeper seated structures are wounded, and 

 the solid, instead of yielding parts of the foot, sustain 

 the injury. 



In addition to warm-water bathing, a linseed-meal poul- 

 tice may be applied for the first three days in a case of bad 



