QUITTOR. 599 



the foot, and applying a poultice or a wet bandage round the 

 coronet, the swelling will subside, and the horse be rendered 

 sound in the course of three or four days' longer rest. Here 

 we have none of the essentials of quittor, though men often 

 make something very like one, which ends in consequences 

 equally bad through excessive meddling. To those who 

 ask how is matter to get free from within the hoof if we 

 don't cut down upon it ? we put another question, Do men 

 suppose that nature left such occurrences unprovided for ? 

 no student of Nature's works will entertain such notion. 



The fact appears to us to be, that quittor is a state con- 

 sequent on a deep-seated lesion of the foot, in which the 

 cartilages, or frequently even the coffin-bone, is affected at 

 its posterior extremity indicated by the seat of the disease. 

 Old standing and progressively increasing corns are the 

 common sources of quittor recent injuries of the kind only 

 superficially affect the connecting surface of the sensitive 

 foot ; but in process of time horn tumours press into the 

 structures ; when ulceration of bone and cartilage goes on, 

 to remove and make way, mortification more or less of these 

 occur ; hence the necessary separation of parts before a cure 

 can be effected ; and but for proper treatment these cases 

 go on from bad to worse, so that a spontaneous cure rarely 

 occurs. A quittor is a sign of a complication of long- 

 standing disease in the foot, or of some serious lesion, such 

 as the fracture of some point of the coffin-bone, or an ossified 

 cartilage, all of which pathological conditions we have found ; 

 so that in our diagnosis of the actual state and probable 

 result, the nature of the case must be fully taken into ac- 

 count, the name quittor going little towards helping to solve 

 the question as to the extent and character of the disease. 



Symptoms and Treatment. We are sometimes consulted 

 on the case of a horse very lame, where we find heat and 



