492 SEEDY TOE. 



prevention of corn. Not much heed has been taken of either 

 the morbidly thick sole or of contraction as causes of corn, and 

 yet has corn been got rid of. This is tolerably convincing 

 proof that shoeing, if not wholly, at least in the great majority 

 of cases, is in fault. Therefore to shoeing let us look for our 

 prophylactic. To shoeing, indeed, we have looked, and in shoe- 

 ing we have found our preventive : the main consideration being, 

 that no shoe be of a shape, or be so nailed upon the foot as, to 

 endanger its heel coming down, presently or remotely, upon 

 the seat of corn. 



Seedy Toe. 



Definition and Name. — This is a disease of foot consist- 

 ing in a mouldering away, as though through decay, of the toe 

 of the hoof, the horn whereof, on being scraped with any hard 

 body, or even picked with the finger nail, crumbles into minute 

 fragments, which seem to have been regarded as bearing some 

 resemblance to garden seeds, whence it would appear has been 

 derived the appellation of seedy toe. 



Veterinary Writers are strangely silent on this 

 SUBJECT. Either they appear to have regarded it as one too 

 insignificant to engage their pens ; or else they have found it, 

 on investigation, simple as it seemed to be, to be involved in 

 more intricacy than they had calculated on, and so have aban- 

 doned it to future inquiry. In none of the veterinary works I 

 have consulted have I been fortunate enough to meet with any 

 account of seedy toe. 



The Origin and Progress of the disease before us is 

 worthy our best attention, not only as being the most likely 

 means of shewing us how such a case had best be managed, but 

 as tending to infuse light into a department of veterinary patho- 

 logy manifestly in want of cultivation ; since, from all that I 

 have been able to learn, some of the most eminent practitioners, 

 up to the hour I am writing, seem hardly to have given the 

 subject a thought; while others, who have thought about 

 it, entertain very different opinions. In its incipient stage, 

 when nothing more is to be seen than a sort of dry rot of the 

 horn of the toe, the farrier, on the occasion he is about to fresh 



