QUITTOR. 355 
the shoulders. Of all other shapes of misery they seem ignorant. Ani- 
mals limp over the stones, every step being an agony; but the police- 
men look on at such pictures with placid conntenances. Horses are 
driven at night in a state of glanders which renders them dangerous to 
mankind; yet no officer thinks of looking at the head of an animal for 
the sign of suffering or the warning of public peril. Creatures, in every 
stage of misery, may be seen openly progressing along the streets of the 
metropolis; but so the shoulders be sound, the brute who goads them 
forward performs his office with impunity. Still, it is something gained, 
that the law has recognized the want of man’s absolute power over the 
feelings of those creatures intrusted to his care. Let us hope, as knowl- 
edge extends, the legal perceptions will be quickened. It is partly with 
this view that the present “illustrated work” is published. 
Quittor is a terrible disorder. To comprehend thoroughly the pain 
which accompanies it, the reader must understand the structures through 
which it has to penetrate, and the substances it has to absorb. All parts 
are slowly acted upon in proportion as they are lowly organized. Car- 
tilage is the structure into the composition of which no blood-vessels 
enter. Next to cartilage is bone, which, though supplied with vessels, 
is, on account of its mixture with inorganic matter, exposed only to 
slow decay, and the exfoliation of which is effected at a vast expense to 
the vital energy. These substances mainly compose the foot of the 
horse. In addition, there is ligament, almost as slowly acted upon as 
bone; disease in which substance is accompanied by the greatest 
anguish. Horn is an external protection; but that material, though 
an animal secretion, is strictly inorganic: when cut it does not occasion 
pain—neither does it bleed. If a portion of horn should press upon 
the flesh it must be removed by the knife; for, unlike the more highly- 
gifted structures, there is no chance of its being absorbed. 
The hoof, therefore, being the external covering to the foot of the 
horse, and not being liable to the same action as organic secretions, 
serves to confine pus or matter when generated within its substance. 
Pus could work through the largest organized body; but it cannot 
escape through the thinnest layer of horn. Now, most of the other 
substances which enter into the composition of the horse’s foot are such 
as slowly decay; but those parts which slowly decay being without 
sensation during health, occasion the most extreme agony when diseased. 
The cause of quittor always is confined pus or matter, which, in its 
effort to escape, absorbs and forms sinuses in various directions within 
the sensitive substances of the hoof. In the hind feet of cart-horses 
quittor generally commences at the coronet; the coronet is wounded or 
bruised by the large calkins or pieces of iron turned up at the back of 
