486 CORN. 



sions to generate corns, and in them corns cannot be said, but 

 by accident, to owe their production to shoeing. In these cases, 

 it would appear that the sole, from growing thick and unyielding, 

 or possibly from its becoming anormally concave at the angles, 

 offers the impediment to the descending tendency of this part of 

 the foot, and thus occasions, the same as the shoe would, a bruise, 

 between the horny sole and the coffin-bone, of the sensitive 

 sole. Most writers, however, attribute this to lateral pressure, 

 resulting from contraction; which, in fact, is making contraction 

 a cause of corn. Both Blaine and Youatt ascribe it to what 

 they term " wiring in " of the heels of the wall ; though I cannot 

 see, myself, how this can operate in the production of corn, unless 

 it be through the contracted heels rendering the angles of the 

 sole fixtures. 



The Pathology of Corn will vary with the stage it hap- 

 pens to be in at the time. A recent corn consists in no more 

 than an ecchymosu or extravasation of blood, the consequence 

 of violent compression or contusion of the villous tissue of the 

 sensitive sole. Should the blood have transuded, as it com- 

 monly does more or less, into the pores of the horn, whenever 

 the shoe is taken off the foot, redness of the part will render 

 the corn apparent ; though now and then the corn-place requires 

 to be scraped or pared out with the drawing-knife before the 

 discolouration becomes visible. The red stain may amount to 

 a broad patch, or only to a spot or marbled surface ; and the 

 dye, though ordinarily red, may assume a brownish or even a 

 blackish cast ; or, it may so happen that there is hardly any 

 or no blush at all to be seen. But, on the contrary, there may 

 be softness or bogginess of the horn over the part, owing to its 

 being soaked in a serous or ichorous issue : this constituting a 

 soft corn, in contradistinction to the other, which may be denomi- 

 nated a AarcZ corTi ; since in the latter the horn is not only often 

 thick, but dry and hard over it. 



A Festered or Suppurated Corn ordinarily indicates 

 an advanced stage of the disease ; though it is possible a corn 

 may take on suppuration from the very beginning. In the 

 usual course, in consequence ofinflammation, serous issue suc- 

 ceeds to extravasation, and afterwards pus is secreted ; or the 



