406 ACUTE LAMINITIS. 



low; there may or may not be changes evident, externally, around 

 the coronet; nevertheless, pain and fever terribly harass the patient, 

 until, exhausted by his ceaseless sufferings, he dies of mortification. 

 This has been known to happen so early as the second day, though 

 other cases have run on as late as the fourteenth day, and then so 

 terminated. After death, if we examine the feet, we find little or 

 no displacement of parts : but we find serous effusion upon the sur- 

 face ; the sensitive laminse full of blood and almost black, and, with 

 the slightest force that can be used, detaching themselves from their 

 union with the horny laminae. And even the coffin-bone — which 

 was on one occasion, in which the hind feet proved gangrenous, 

 sawn through by the late Mr. Field — is found to exhibit " an 

 almost equal degree of blackness*." The peculiar situation of the 

 sensitive laminse, between the coffin-bone and the hoof, renders 

 them, as has been before observed, under high congestive inflam- 

 mation, very liable to become squeezed, and in a measure strangled, 

 between the two hard substances by which they are fenced ; and 

 it is under such circumstances, I repeat, that mortification or 

 gangrene is produced in them ; of which the animal sinks rapidly, 

 and dies at last almost unexpectedly, after having suffered days 

 and nights of the intensest torment and agony. 



Chronic Laminitis, a stage the acute disease will every now 

 and then run into, instead of declaring its termination in one or 

 other of the ways but now pointed out, and whose consequences 

 are different in some important respects from any we have yet 

 examined, will be considered in speaking of sub-acute laminitis. 



The Pathology of Laminitis brings some facts before us 

 which, while they are of a different nature from others happening 

 under similar circumstances in other tissues, are important for 

 us to become acquainted with, from their serving to explain cer- 

 tain phenomena occurring in the course and termination of the dis- 

 ease. It seems not only ascertained that all the soft tissues of the 

 foot participate more or less in the inflammation, but it is equally 

 so that the coffin-bone itself, which is perforate in every part for 

 the passage of bloodvessels, likewise partakes of the inflammatory 

 action. Now, by these perforating bloodvessels it is that the 

 * Posthumous Extracts from his Veterinary Records, p. 200. 



