INFLAMMATORY AFFECTIONS 307 



temperament.' This, we believe, is credited to-day by some, 

 and yet, quite 100 years before the date of the 1872 edition of 

 WiUiams's work — in 1756, to be exact — we find a veterinary 

 writer when talking of grease (a disease, by-the-by, very 

 closely allied to canker) exclaiming against this habit of 

 referring everything which we do not rightly understand to 

 some ill-humour of the body. The wisdom his words con- 

 tain justifies us in giving them mention here. * It is a very 

 foolish and absurd Notion,' he says, 'to imagine a Horse 

 full of Humours when he happens to be troubled with the 

 Grease. But such Shallow Reasoning will always abound 

 while Peoples' Judgments are always superficial. There- 

 fore, to convince such unthinking Folks, let them take a 

 thick Stick and beat a Horse soundly upon his Legs so that 

 they bruise them in several Places, after which they will 

 swell, I dare say, and yet be in no danger of Greasing. 

 Now, pray, what were these offending Humours doing before 

 the Bruises given by the Stick?' 



At the present day it is safe to assert that neither the 

 ulcerative, the cancerous, nor the constitutional theory 

 is believed in widely, and, among the mass of contrary 

 opinions as to the cause of this disease, we may find that 

 even quite early many of the older writers had discarded 

 them. 



Quoting from Zundel, we may say that Dupuy in 1827 

 considered canker as a hypertrophy of the fibres of the hoof, 

 admitting at the same time that these fibres were softened 

 by an altered secretion ; while Mercier in 1841 stated that 

 canker was nothing more than a chronic inflammation of 

 the reticular tissue of the foot, characterized by diseased 

 secretions of this apparatus. 



Saving that they make no mention of a likely specific 

 cause, these last two statements express all that we believe 

 to-day. As early as 1854, however, the existence of a 

 specific cause was hinted at by Blaine in his ' Veterinary 

 Art.' We find hiui here describing canker as a fungoid 

 excrescence, exuding a thin and offensive discharge, which 

 inoculates the soft parts within its reach, particularly the 



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