CANKER. 309 



hi"-h, that all pressure on° the frog; is taken away, its functions are 

 destroyed, and it is rendered liable to disease. Canker, however, arises 

 more from the peculiar injury to which the feetof these horses are subject from 

 the enormous shoes with which they are covered, the bulk of the nails 

 with which these shoes are necessarily fastened to the foot, and the strain of 

 the foot, in the violent although short exertion in moving heavy weights ; 

 but most of all from the neglect of the feet, and the filthiness of the stable 

 in these establishments. Although canker is a disease most difficult to 

 remove, it is easily prevented. Attention to the punctures to which these 

 heavy horses, with their clubbed feet and brittle hoofs, are more than any 

 others subject in shoeing, and to the bruises and treads on the coronet, to 

 which with their awkwardness and weight they are so liable, and the greasy 

 heels which a very slight degree of neghgence will produce in them, and 

 to the stopping of the thrushes, which are so apt in them to run on to the 

 separation of the horn from the sensible frog, will most materially lessen 

 the number of cankered feet. Where this disease often occurs, the owner of 

 the team may be well assured that there is gross mismanagement either in 

 himself, or his horsekeeper, or smith, or surgeon, and it will rarely be a 

 difficult matter to detect the precise nature of that mismanagement. 



The cure of canker is the business of the veterinary surgeon, and a most 

 harassing and tedious business it is. The principles on which he pro- 

 ceeds are first of all to remove the extraneous fungous growth, and here 

 probably he will call in the aid both of the knife and the caustic, or 

 the cautery; he will cut away every portion of horn which is in the 

 slightest degree se])arated from the sensible parts beneath. He will next 

 endeavour to discourage the growth of fresh fungus, and to bring the 

 foot into that state in which it will again secrete healthy horn : here 

 he will remember that he has to do with the surface of the foot; that this 

 is a disease of the surface only, and that there will be no necessity for 

 those deeply-corroding and torturing caustics which will eat to the very 

 bone. A slight and daily application of the chloride of antimony, and that 

 not where the new horn is forming, but only on the surface which conti- 

 nues to be diseased, and accompanied by as firm but equal pressure as can 

 be made — and the careful avoidance of the slightest degree of moisture — the 

 horse being exercised or worked in the mill, or wherever the foot will not be 

 exposed to wet — and that exercise adopted as early as possible, and even 

 from the beginning if the disease is confined to the sole and frog — these 

 means will succeed if the disease is capable of cure. Humanity, perhaps, 

 will dictate, that, considering the long process of cure in a cankered foot, 

 and the daily torture of the caustic, and the suffering which would other- 

 wise result from so large or exposed a surface, the nerves of the leg should 

 be divided to take away the sense of pain ; but then especial care must be 

 taken that the horse is placed in such a situation, and exposed to such 

 work, that, being insensible to pain,;he may not injuriously batter and bruise 

 diseased parts. 



Medicine is not of much in the avail in the cure of canker. It is a mere 

 local disease ; or the only cause of fear is, that so great a determination of 

 blood to the extremities, having existed during the long progress of the 

 cure, it may in some degree continue, and produce injury in another form. 

 Grease has occasionally followed canker. They have, although rarely, 

 been known to alternate. When one has become better, the other has 

 appeared, and that for a considerable period. It may, therefore, be pru- 

 dent, when the cure of a cankered foot is nearly eflected, to subject the 

 horse to a course of alteratives or diuretics. 



