602 FOUNDER, ACUTE AND CHRONIC. 



FOUNDER, ACUTE AND CHRONIC. 



The above terms, and several others, are used at present 

 to express the same condition of the feet of horses and 

 the character of the lameness ; the word founder implying, 

 in the case of a horse as in that of a ship, the want of free- 

 dom to move. 



Fever in the feet is also an old term, used to designate 

 similar cases to the above, neither of which, though some- 

 what vague, convey the positively erroneous notions of the 

 modern terms, wrongly called scientific, which have been 

 adopted ; inflammation of the laminae, and more recently 

 laminitis, are terms introduced, under the notion that the 

 disease and pain is located in the laminated connecting 

 medium between the wall of the hoof and the organic 

 structures. 



We discover a totally different locality to be the original 

 seat of disease, and almost an entirely different train of 

 causes which give rise to it, and, as may be conceived, if 

 our premises be correct, a totally different mode of treat- 

 ment to be indicated. 



The plantar region of the foot being the affected part in all 

 cases which the foregoing terms are meant to indicate, both 

 fore feet of the horse are commonly affected at the same 

 time ; sometimes all the feet take on in succession an acute, 

 inflammatory state, arising from being alike exposed to 

 causes, constitutional and mechanical, and the inability of 

 either foot to sustain the exertion destined to be equally 

 distributed over all four. The proximate causes are, ex- 

 posing the feet to moist soft surfaces, such as on farm- 

 yard manure and wet soil, breeding horses on marshy un- 

 drained lands, &c. Bad shoeing and hard work constitut- 

 ing the most common immediate causes, the degree of work 



