686 OPEKATIONS ON THE FOOT. 



to a traumatic origin, consisting of injuries of the foot ; and again, 

 to internal lesions, resulting in the inflammatory process which is 

 characteristic of the affection. 



The external traumatic injuries, which it is claimed are those 

 chiefly instrumental, are, on the contrary, of very rare occurrence 

 as causes of the disease. Our observations agree with those of 

 H. Bouley, and if there is a traumatic causation for this disease, 

 or, at least, one identical with it in respect to symptoms and 

 primitive lesions, it is, nevertheless, certain that its progress is 

 very different ; there is found with it an evident tendency to suj)- 

 puration instead of exudation, and there is no such formation as 

 the chronic process which is found when laminitis is due to an 

 internal phlegmasia. 



It has been said in reference to the action of the heated shoe 

 uj)on the hoof, the percussion of the blacksmith's hammer and 

 the pressiure of the shoe and of the nails uj)on the Hving tissues, 

 that all these causes together must, as their sure effect, make the 

 foot tender, and stimulate in its constituting structxu'e, the con- 

 gestion which is the initial phenomenon of founder itself. But 

 this assumption may be successfully contested. But shoeing may 

 produce many forms of lameness ; never laminitis. It has been 

 said that feet of defective conformation are more commonly af- 

 fected with founder that those which are well formed. This, 

 however, is not so ; feet with contracted heels are no more predis- 

 posed to it than flat feet, as claimed by Girard. Traumatic acci- 

 dents, as blows, injuries and pressure, produced by stones, crush- 

 ing of the feet under heavy weights or under the wheels of a 

 truck, etc., may produce a violent congestion of the reticular tis- 

 sue of the foot, and consequently laminitis. But this founder 

 itself is of too active a character and more complex, perhaps with 

 a natural tendency to suppuration, as we have already said. It 

 must then be considered as varying from laminitis proper, or that 

 form in which the congestion is of a more passive character, or at 

 least internal and somewhat analagous to that which is sometimes 

 observed in the lungs or in the intestines. It might be better 

 described as an "astonishment" {^tonnement) of the foot, as it is 

 sometimes called. 



Laminitis proper is rarely due to a unique cause, but more 

 properly to a number of circumstances or to an assemblage of 

 various causes by which the horse is at first somewhat indisposed 



