INFLAMMATORY AFFECTIONS 257 
The tenderness following upon excessive hammering in 
the forge, or of too long an application of the shoe in hot- 
fitting has also been described as laminitis. 
With either of the conditions we have mentioned, it goes 
without saying that there is either a simple congestion or 
an actual inflammation, localized or general, of the laminz 
of the injured foot. In neither case, however, can the 
resulting mischief be closely compared with the lesions 
attending an attack of laminitis proper, a disease which 
appears to have an almost specific cause, and to run a 
course peculiarly its own. 
The specific cause we have indicated as existing can, in 
the present state of our knowledge, be only vaguely de- 
scribed as a poisoned state of the blood-stream. This, as 
clinical evidence teaches us, may result from a variety 
of causes. 
Among these, by far the most common is that state of 
the circulation induced by excessive feeding with too stimu- 
lating or too irritating a diet. In any case, where the use 
of old oats as a staple diet is departed from, and where the 
quantity and manner of using the substitute is left to the 
discretion of careless or unskilled attendants, trouble is 
likely to ensue. The food more prone, perhaps, than any 
other to bring about an attack is wheat improperly pre- 
pared—that is, uncooked or unground. So much so is this 
the case that one full meal of this provender to an animal 
unused to it is sufficient to lead to a train of symptoms 
often ending fatally. 
Beans, peas, barley, rye, new maize, or even new oats, 
are all liable, if carelessly used, to have the same effect. 
It is the laminitis following feeding on new oats that has 
caused us to apply to the food the adjective ‘irritating.’ 
Here, more often than not, the peristaltic action of the 
bowels is found to be abnormally in evidence, and the exces- 
sive use of the diet is always accompanied by a more or less 
fluid discharge of the intestinal contents. 
In addition to, the foods we have mentioned, many others 
might be enumerated, more especially the numerous * made- 
17 
