SECOND STAGE OF FARCY. 307 



awkward manner in which he drags his farcied limb after him, 

 tell plainly of the pain and inconvenience motion puts him to ; and 

 yet, when so much swelling sets in, we by practice find that exer- 

 cise is one of our most influential agents in bringing about a re- 

 duction of it. 



After the inflammation has reached its acme, and is on the 

 decline, the swelling, somewhat diminished, becomes altered in 

 nature from an inflammatory to an oedematous one; parts that 

 before were hot and tense and tender, now become hardly warmer 

 than in a state of health, lose all their morbid sensitiveness, and 

 pit under the pressure of the finger. In fact, the disease, so far 

 as the general tumefaction is concerned, is now assuming one of 

 those forms to which farriers of old applied the ambiguous appella- 

 tion of " watery farcy." 



The First Stage of Farcy, from what has been said, will be 

 found to consist in the development of the farcy-bud, and to last so 

 long as the bud retains its properties of solidity, heat, and tender- 

 ness, and is accompanied by inflammatory tumefaction and lameness. 



The Second Stage is commonly a suppurative one. The solid 

 bud gradually grows soft from centre to circumference, and at length 

 becomes 2i pustule or little abscess, which as soon as ripe bursts, or 

 rather, gives way at the most prominent and thinnest part of its cap- 

 sule, and admits at the place where it has partially burst the tardy 

 escape of its contents, part of them being still retained by the flaps 

 of the capsule and the investing hairs. In this sparing or partial 

 manner does a farcy pustule unload itself when left to break in the 

 natural way : in time, however, the remains of the capsule become 

 absorbed, and then we have exposed to view di farcy ulcer. 



The Matter discharged from a Farcy Pustule ordinarily 

 is puriform. It is not, however, what we should regard as laudable 

 pus; it is thinner in consistence, and has a dingy or dirty yellow or 

 white aspect, and is offensive. Now and then it is bloody : in 

 other cases it is more of the nature of ichor, or an ill-conditioned 

 foetid serum, than pus. Farcy pustules that have, from some ap- 

 parent deficiency in the adhesive inflammation, extended their usual 

 or natural limits, and thus become abscesses of comparatively large 



