THRUSH. 363 
THRUSH. 
Veterinary writers are very fond of splitting hairs about words. 
Thrush, therefore, in most books, becomes “frush ;” notwithstanding, if 
the reader should consult any professional authority, or 
a professor at either of the colleges, the person so ap- 
pealed to will decidedly designate the disease as it is 
here spelled. The disorder therefore bears, in these pages, 
the name it carries in ordinary speech, and all far-fetched 
distinctions are discarded. 
Thrush is a foul discharge issuing from the cleft of the Z 
frog, and attended with disorganization of the horn, It osm rw tae roe 
is derived from two causes—either internal disease or bad crust, a concave 
stable management. When internal disease gives rise to i 
thrush, it is present in the fore foot. The quarters of the 
hoof are strong and high; the sole is thick and concave; the frog small 
and ragged. When bad stable managemert provokes the disorder, it 
shows itself in the hind foot, which may be of any shape; but the frog 
is generally large, while the discharge is more copious than in the former 
instance. 
It is sad to think that the creature which lives but to toil, and whose 
existence is a type of such slavery that its greatest freedom is to labor, 
should be begrudged the bed whereon it reposes, or be doomed to stand 
in filth which will generate disease. The horse’s foot is not very suscep- 
tible to external influences. It is incased in a hard and inorganic, yet 
elastic substance. Thus protected, it appears like praising the ingenuity 
of man when we say such a body is not proof against his neglect. The 
hoof is made to travel through mud and through water ; 
it is created to canter over sand and over stones. It is 
capable of all its purposes; but it only seems not fitted 
to be soaking days and nights in the filth of a human 
lazar-house. The drainage of the stable is too often 
clogged; the ventilation bad; the bedding rotten, and 
more than half composed of excrement. All that passes 
through the body, from the inclination of the flooring, russ IN THE BIND 
tends toward the hind feet. Over this muck the animal ; 
breathes. In it the creature stands, and on it the victim reposes. 
No wonder the horn rots when implanted in a mass of fermenting filth. 
The fleshy, secreting parts, which it is the office of the hoof to protect, 
ultimately become affected ; they take on a peculiar form of irritation ; 
from the cleft of the frog a discharge issues; it becomes colored and 
