ACUTE LAMINITIS. 401 



I have been quoting, Mr. Castley informs us, he once heard Pro- 

 fessor .Dick, in his Lecture, say, " he had frequently seen laminitis 

 arise from overloading or gorging the stomach with food. A horse, 

 perhaps, gets loose, and eats an extraordinary quantity of any kind 

 of grain : an attack of inflammation of the feet is likely to be the 

 consequence. And such is the sympathy between the stomach, 

 the alimentary canal, and the cutaneous surface, that, if we regard 

 the hoofs as a continuation of the common integuments, this is not 

 to be wondered at." The action of cold water upon a heated body 

 may be similarly accounted for. And this likewise may account for 

 certain kinds of food, such as barley and rye and wheat, having a 

 tendency to produce it. 



Metastasis of inflammation from the lungs to the feet, after in- 

 flammation in the former has happened to be severe and is becoming 

 protracted, is a mode in which laminitis on occasions takes its rise*. 

 The inflammation is then said " to fall from the lungs down into 

 the feet;" though itoftener happens that the inflammation "falls" 

 into the joints, producing "rheumatic lamenesst." As soon as the 

 metastasis has taken place the lungs become relieved through it; 

 nor is the fever that has " fallen" into the feet of so violent and 

 unmanageable character as is idiopathic laminitis. 



It is said that the lungs, in their turn, may become affected 

 through translation of the inflammation from the feet ; to which I 

 would add, that this seems more likely to happen when the lungs 

 are already in an anormal condition. 



Metastasis from the bowels to the feet is hardly less rare. 

 Purgation and diarrhoBa end occasionally in fever in the feet, and 

 seem more especially likely to do so whenever any check or diver- 

 sion is given to the increased and inflammatory action going on in 

 the intestines — and stomach, as well, perhaps. " Catching cold in 

 physic," as it is called, is not at all unlikely to turn into an attack of 

 laminitis. Indeed, without any distinct evidence that '• cold" had 

 been taken, I have known an attack of laminitis, on more occa- 

 sions than one, seize horses just out of their physic, or at the 



* It is my constant practice, whenever a horse is seriously ill, to take his 

 shoes off. This, it is possible, I think, might have a tendency to prevent 

 the translation. 



•j" Hippopathology, vol. iv, p. 35 e^ sequent. 



VOL. IV. 3 F 



