Treatment of Laminitis. 1 1 7 



water every two hours night and day, until the 

 fever abates, then give mash, raw swede, man- 

 gold, carrot ; if in summer, green food in small 

 quantities, and change its food often. Horses 

 once having laminitis are always liable to a re- 

 lapse upon any extra exertion. ''No foot, no 

 horse," is a proverb staunch and true; yet when 

 we look to the numerous complaints and disease 

 of the foot that the horse is subject to, and all the 

 evils that arise from the ignorance and prejudice 

 of the shoeing smith, the groom and the master, 

 the wonder is, not that we have many lame 

 horses, but that we have any sound ones. How 

 many smiths are there who will boast that they 

 can drive a nail its full length up the delicate 

 hoof of the foot, as they say, without injuring 

 the foot. Many, again, will use eight, and I 

 have seen some horses with nine nails to hold 

 one shoe, and then after doing all they can to 

 destroy the foot they grumble and call the horse 

 a brittle-footed brute, and tell us the horse has 

 not a bit of foot to nail to. They do not think, 

 and they do not like to be told, that it is their 

 ignorance of the structure of the hoof that has 

 been the cause of all the mischief. The fact is 

 the nails they drive cut the fibres of which 

 the hoof is composed, and as these fibres are cut 

 so they become dead horn, all the nutritious 

 mucus being cut off that supplies life and elas- 

 ticity to the hoof,' no life existing from the part 

 they have injured up at the clenches to the line 

 of demarcation at the sole. It is not only the 

 fibres that are cut that receive injury, but in 



