330 CANKER. 



JAN-KER 



Is a separation of the horn from the sensible part of the foot, and 

 the sprouting of the fungous matter (proud-flesh) instead of it, oc- 

 cupying a portion or even the whole of the sole and frog. It is 

 the occasional consequence of bruise, puncture, corn, quittor, and 

 thrush, and is exceedingly difficult to cure. It is more fre- 

 quently the consequence of neglected thrush than of any other 

 disease of the foot, or rather it is thrush involving the frog, the 

 bars, and the sole, and making the foot in one mass of rank 

 putrefaction. 



It is often found in, and is almost peculiar to, the heavy breed of 

 cart-horses, and partly resulting from constitutional predisposition. 

 Horses with white legs and thick skins, and much hair upon 

 their legs — the very character of many dray-horses — are subject 

 to canker, especially if they have an attack of grease, or their 

 heels are habitually thick and greasy. The disposition to canker 

 is certainly hereditary. 



Altliough canker is a disease most difficult to remove, it is 

 easily prevented. Attention to the punctures to which these 

 heavy horses, with their clubbed feet and brittle hoofs, are more 

 than any others subject in shoeing, and to the bruises and 

 treads on the coronet, to which, from their awkwardness and 

 weight, they are so liable, and the greasy heels which a very 

 slight degree of negligence will produce in them, and the stopping 

 of the thrushes, which are so apt in them to run on to the sepa- 

 ration of the horn from the sensible frog, will most materially 

 lessen the number of cankered feet. 



The cure of canker is the business of the veterinary surgeon, 

 and a most painful and tedious business it is. The principles 

 on which he proceeds are, first of all, to remove the extraneous 

 fungous growth ; and for this purpose he will need the aid of 

 the knife and the caustic, or the cautery, for he should cut 

 away every portion of horn which is in the slightest degree sep- 

 arated from the sensible parts beneath. He will have to dis- 

 courage the growth of fresh fungus, and to bring the foot into 

 that state in which it will again secrete healthy horn. A 

 slight and daily application of the chloride of antimony, and 

 that not where the new horn is forming, but on the surface 

 which continues to be diseased, and accompanied by as firm but 

 equal pressure as can be made — the careful avoidance of the 

 slightest degree of moisture — the horse being exercised or worked 

 in the mill, or wherever the foot will not be exposed to wet, 

 and that exercise adopted as early as possible, and even from 

 the begiiming, if the malady is confined to the sole and frog — 



