ACUTE LAMINITIS. 415 



therefore hear with pleasure practitioners asserting, that ether and 

 opium and belladonna are so many useful remedies for this purpose, 

 and consequently demand to be used at this stage of our proceedings. 

 Ether may be exhibited as the common fever drink; and digitaHs 

 may be given with nitre, &c., with similar febrifuge intentions; 

 though, for my own part, T should have more reliance upon the 

 former than the latter remedy. If I gave opium, I would admi- 

 nister it in a solid form and in full doses, say a couple of drachms 

 or more, once or twice in the course of the twenty-four hours. 

 Belladonna is a great favourite with some veterinarians of the 

 modern school. The extract, they tell us, may be exhibited in 

 one or two-drachm doses two or three times a-day with signal 

 advantage. 



In regard to any further applications to the feet, so long as the 

 disease continues to advance or remains painful, we must persist 

 in the use of such means — in particular of the poultices — as 

 will be most likely to create and encourage discharge from the 

 setons ; which must, as directed by Mr. Gabriel, be kept running 

 for some days after even the poultices have been discontinued. 

 Should the case — as is likely to happen — at this period run into a 

 chronic form, topical remedies of another class may be called for, 

 besides attention to the feet, to the shoes, &c., all which will come 

 under notice when sub-acute laminitis shall come to be considered. 



In January 1837, Professor Ferdinando de Nanzio, Director of 

 the Veterinary College at Naples, who was at the time on a visit 

 to this country, laid before the Veterinary Medical Association, at 

 our Veterinary College, a paper on the subject before us, develop- 

 ing a novel, and what appeared in my eyes a strange, plan of treat- 

 ment for laminitis ; a plan, indeed, which entertaining notions such 

 as in these pages have been laid down, could be viewed at the 

 time by me in no other light than as the unseemly and incon- 

 gruous application of the mechanical art to veterinary therapeutics; 

 nor has trial of it by me been followed by such results as serve 

 to bring it, in my mind, anywise into favour. However, it is not 

 my desire, by any pre-expressed opinions of my own, to throw cold 

 water on that which the Professor himself has described in such 

 terms of confidence and commendation as to leave little doubt but 



