414 ACUTE LAMINITIS. 



a practice likely to prove in urgent cases highly beneficial. Should 

 there be any apprehension of too much blood being lost, the feet, 

 he says, may be plunged into cold water. 



In lieu of the mode of treatment which I have been here recom- 

 mending, by some veterinarians a totally opposite course is pur- 

 sued. Instead of warm and soothing applications, they make use 

 of cold and repellent ones ; they endeavour to repel or drive away 

 the inflammation, alleging that the treatment adopted by us has a 

 tendency to induce the suppurative action, the very thing it is our 

 duty to avoid. For this purpose, constant supplies of the coldest 

 water, tying the horse up in a stream of water, applications of 

 pounded ice or snow to the feet, should either be attainable, &c., 

 are various methods in practice for the agency of cold ; and, no 

 doubt, they have in many cases proved eff*ectual ; though, in my 

 opinion, they are not a class of remedies to be adopted for choice, 

 but only under circumstances of convenience or necessity. I have, 

 before now, all but benumbed and paralysed the feet by the use of 

 ice ; but without that beneficial effect which, considering our grand 

 object to be resolution, some might expect from it : nay, indeed, 

 sometimes I have felt quite convinced that such extreme cold has 

 provoked mortification. 



After we have drawn as much blood as we dare from the system, 

 and have followed that up by topical blood-letting ; and after the 

 physic has worked well, and we have paid all due attention to the 

 setons with the warm applications, or to the cold practice without 

 setons, to the feet, and still the animal continues suffering keenly and 

 cruelly, we are induced to make trial of another class of remedies, to 

 endeavour to assuage or stifle the poor sufferer's pains. Some practi- 

 tioners — among whom, as we have seen, stands Mr. Gabriel — suc- 

 ceed the copious evacuation of the bowels hy fever medicine ; others 

 have recourse to narcotics. I must confess, my own experience in 

 this part of the treatment has not yielded much in favour of either 

 of these modes of allaying fever and pain. Feeling that the source 

 and seat of pain is the foot, I have been in the habit of directing 

 my therapeutic measures to the relief of that, with but little regard 

 — perhaps not so much as I ought to have had — for the nervous 

 commotion and sympathetic suffering set up in tlie system. I 



