288 HEALTH AND DISEASE 



disease on the affected joints leave the animal a cripple for life and 

 an undesirable possession. 



Having regard to the serious losses which this affection annually 

 occasions in our large and fashionable studs, and the resistance it offers 

 to treatment, it behoves breeders of horses to give every consideration 

 to those more reliable measures by which the disease may be prevented. 



It has been already pointed out that a wound to be infected, and 

 organisms to infect it, are the essential factors in the origin of the 

 disease, and to protect the one against the other is all that is needed to 

 ensure its prevention. 



To do this requires a considerable amount of care and attention, first 

 as regards the sanitary condition of the box and its surroundings, and 

 secondly as to the navel wound by which the poison enters the body of 

 the foal. 



The foaling-box should be large, well-ventilated, eflficiently drained, 

 and situated away from the crew-yard and other filthy sites. It should 

 have a washable floor, and an interior the whole of which can be readily 

 disinfected and washed or lime-whited. At the commencement of every 

 season it should receive a thorough cleansing and disinfection from floor tO' 

 ceiling, and this should be repeated from time to time as foaling proceeds. 

 The box should be well littered with clean straw, which must be removed 

 and replaced by a fresh supply as each mare passes out. At the same time 

 the floor should be freely dressed with disinfecting solution and covered 

 with lime. 



So soon as the foal is born the navel-string should at once receive a 

 thorough soaking with a five -per -cent solution of carbolic acid, and half 

 an hour after be dusted over with boracic acid powder. If it is necessary 

 to ligate or tie anything round it, catgut, macerated for some time in 

 carbolized oil, should be used. In all well-appointed studs a bottle con- 

 taining a link of this material is kept ready for use. 



It is of the first importance that whoever has the handling of the 

 umbilical cord should not only have clean hands but should have pre- 

 viously dressed them with an efficient disinfectant. 



The navel, the cord attached to it, and skin about it, should be freely 

 disinfected three or four times a day with fluid dressing, and afterwards 

 covered with a powder of boracic acid and iodoform. 



Until healing of the umbilical wound has been completed foals should 

 not be allowed to scamper over manure heaps, or dirty roads, or any 

 unclean surface. 



