CANKER. 441 



Canker. 



CANKER, in the sense in which we make use of tlie word 

 i-n hippo-pathology, i^iay be said to be synonymous with cancer 

 in human medicine : the latter being the Latin name for a crab, 

 an ill-favoured animal the disease in certain forms has been 

 supposed to resemble. For the same reason, cancer is sometimes 

 called lupus or wolf. The French have named what we ex- 

 press by canker, crapaud or toad, seemingly from some such 

 fanciful similitude*. 



Definition. — Canker is a disease of the secreting tissues of 

 the foot, affecting in particular the sensitive frog and sole, 

 essentially consisting in the production of a peculiar morbid 

 substance cdHi^edi fungus. 



The History of Canker, in our own country, while it 

 affords most satisfactory results in regard to the contrasted pre- 

 valence and destructiveness of the disease in times past and in 

 times present, opens to us a book of instruction out of which we 

 may learn both how to prevent and to cure it. In former days 

 it was no unusual thing for canker to prevail in large establish- 

 ments of horses in an epidemic and even a malignant form. 

 In the army, the disease was known to create year after year 

 sad defalcations ; nor were these prevented but by the introduc- 

 tion of veterinary surgeons into the several regiments and horse 

 departments. 1 have heard both the late Professor Coleman 

 and my father (who was the senior veterinary surgeon of Artil- 

 lery) say, that, towards the close of the last century and the 

 beginning of the present one, the annual losses to the cavalry 

 and ordnance services, through canker and grease and glanders 

 and periodic ophthalmia, were truly awful. Whereas, at the 

 present day, army veterinary surgeons have it in their power 

 proudly to boast, that such diseases are comparatively rare; — that 

 some indeed are all but unknown to them : so unusual is it to meet 

 even with a case of grease, and so much more uncommon — and 



* Might not canker derive its application to this fungous disease from the 

 meaning attached to the word in Gloucestershire, viz. its signifying *' a poison- 

 ous ftmgus resembling a mushroom" ? — Crabbers Johnson^ s Dictionary. 

 VOL. IV. 3 L 



