69 



India-rubber bar pad is also of great service. If neglected, the 

 inflammation extends to the mternal parts of the foot, when pus or 

 matter forms, and finds its way out at the top of the hoof, causing 

 much pain and suffering to the animal, and perhaps ending in quittor. 



192. Quittor is a most painful and troublesome fistulous disease of 

 the foot. Injuries, of any description, to the foot, may end in quittor. 

 It is not often seen in the country, but in towns it is very common. 

 Railway horses are very subject to it, owing to getting their feet fixed 

 in the rails, and waggons or carts passing over them. The structure 

 of the foot becomes so much implicated that the bone and cartilage 

 become diseased, when holes, or sinuses, are formed at the quarter 

 and round the band of the hoof. At first, cold water poultices may be 

 of some service in reducing the active inflammation ; but when the 

 disease has become chronic, blisters, caustic dressings, and the hot iron 

 have to be applied, while, as a last resource, an operation has to be 

 performed, by which the diseased bone and cartilage are removed 

 making the complicated sores into one simple wound. These cases 

 are much too formidable for the attempts of an amateur, 



193. Side-Bones consist of, and arise from, the ossification 

 of one or both of the latcval cartilages, which are situated at the 

 sides and top of the hoof {see Plate VII., Nos. 6, 7, and 8). They 

 are met with in the fore feet, particularly in those cart-horses, 

 which have strong upright quarters ; but they are very rarely 

 found in flat-footed horses, hacks, or carria-ge-horses. The principal 

 causes are hereditary predisposition, injuries of various kinds, over- 

 reaches, chafing against the sharp edge of a lea-furrow, &c. ; but, 

 in my opinion, the greatest evil of all is the use of high-heeled shoes, 

 removing the frog from its ground pressure, thus throwing the weight 

 on the lateral cartilages. Above the horny, or insensitive fvog, there 

 are elastic fibres running from the inside of one lateral cartilage to the 

 inside of the other, forming what is called the fatty or sensitive frog, 

 into which is inserted the fvogstay, or elevation corresponding to the 

 cleft in the middle of the ground surface of the frog. Now, when the 



