io8 Management and Treatment of the Horse. 



medicine, novel events, remarkable phases, and 

 rare combinations are continually presenting 

 themselves, which can only be understood and 

 successfully encountered by the aid of general 

 principles. Thence the need that every groom 

 v^ho aspires to be a successful man should have 

 a knowledge of pathology and therapeutics, which 

 supply the general knowledge to guide him in 

 treating disease or complications which he has 

 not previously experienced. From the peculiar 

 situation of the sensitive laminee, and their being 

 so highly vascular and abundant in nervous 

 texture, the disease called laminitis, which has 

 its seat in the reticular tissue that envelopes the 

 coffin-bone, consists, I conceive, primarily in a 

 congestion of the blood, which is soon followed 

 with intense inflammation ; the lamince being 

 situated between two hard substances, viz., the 

 coffin bone and the hoof, high congestive inflam- 

 mation is readily produced, and the most violent 

 pain and severe results are the consequence 

 when inflammation ensues. Mr. Percival in his 

 ^^ Hippopathology " has written largely upon this 

 disease, as has also Mr. Wilson, of Bradford, and 

 Mr. Greaves, of Manchester. Laminitis is of two 

 specific kinds, and may be designated natural 

 and unnatural. — First, natural laminitis is mostly 

 found in horses of a low breed, heavy and corpu- 

 lent in body, such as draught horses of various 

 kinds, and this arises, doubtless, from consti- 

 tutional causes, and overfeeding. . Unnatural 

 laminitis or artificial phase of this terrible disease 

 is most frequently met with in light-bred animals, 



