In the Stable, Field, and on the Road. 115 



or it may come on suddenly. When it comes on sud- 

 denly it is attended with great suffering. Occasionally 

 we have suppuration in the fissure, sloughing of the 

 laminae, caries of the bone, superfluous granulation, and 

 in very severe cases the animal gives up, refuses all food, 

 sinks, and dies. Mr. Greaves, in a letter in the Veteri- 

 narian, vol. 48, p. 72, says, " I fully believe that in many 

 cases there is a constitutional tendency to sandcrack, for 

 if we get the fissure to grow out and entirely disappear 

 in one place another crack will make its appearance in 

 another part of the hoof. We often notice that the horse 

 with a sandcrack in one foot, whether it be hind or fore, 

 will sooner or later have another sandcrack in one of the 

 other feet." The author cannot fall into the view of Mr. 

 Greaves upon the constitutional point of the disease, 

 unless, indeed, the patient has an hereditary mal- 

 formation of the foot, as some horses have. Colts 

 by Snowstorm, for instance, have most of them one club 

 foot. I am more in favour of the view taken by my 

 friend Mr. Broad, of Bath. In a conversation I once had 

 with him about this disease, he said, " The majority of 

 cases of sandcrack that came under his notice for treat- 

 ment were those that occur in the toes of heavy cart 

 horses ; they do not arise as the effects of dryness or the 

 defects of the horn itself, as, on the contrar}^, they occur 

 in the strongest and thickest of hoofs which are de- 

 fective in shape, being mostly very upright, so that 

 when the horse is shod with high caulkings — the 

 principal cause — and put to excessively heavy pulling, 

 the front part of the hoof gets more strain upon it than 

 it can sustain, the result being a fracture of the horn. 



