THE FOOT IN HEALTH AND DISEASE iii 



General Management and Treatment. — The author 

 recommends that early professional advice should be 

 obtained, as laminitis is one of those affections that can 

 be only treated upon conservative principles when the 

 trouble arises from some simple cause. When following 

 parturition, unskilled advice would probably mean the 

 loss of the mare, whereas with professional treatment a 

 valuable animal may, perhaps, be saved. Under ordinary 

 circumstances treatment is divisible into {gl) the local, 

 (&) the general. The former comprises the removal of 

 the shoe and the application of either hot or cold bran 

 poultices to the feet. It seems to make little difference 

 whether hot or cold water is employed, but it is absolutely 

 necessary that the fomentation should be of a continuous 

 character ; in other words, the feet must be kept con- 

 stantly wet. 



Up to the present nothing in the way of treatment has 

 been introduced. to supplant, in a satisfactory manner, 

 the irrigation method. In every case it is essential to 

 commence the treatment with a dose of physic, either in 

 the form of Epsom salts added night and morning to the 

 drinking water, or in the form of an aloes or cathartic 

 ball. Without a shadow of doubt, a dose of purgative 

 medicine is the sheet-anchor in the treatment of this 

 disease, but considerable circumspection is necessary, 

 hence the advisability of early professional advice. The 

 temperature usually falls through the use of saline 

 laxative medicine, and this is materially assisted by the 

 discriminate use of green food. No hay should be given, 

 but scalded oats and bran, along with boiled linseed, 

 constitutes the most rational system of dieting a horse 

 when suffering from an acute attack of laminitis. Treat- 

 ment is of a less urgent character when the trouble is sub- 

 acute or chronic. Laminitis sometimes terminates very 

 unfavourably, necessitating the destruction of the animal. 

 This is due to the effusion — the result of the inflammatory 

 action — between the sensitive and the insensitive laminae, 



