374 ACUTE LAMINITIS. 
This formation has been too generally spoken of as pumice foot, 
whereas that peculiarity is altogether distinct. Pumice foot does not 
DIAGRAM. DIAGRAM. 
A section of the horse’s foot, showing the A section of the horse’s foot after one of 
natural and relative situations of the the terminations to acute Jaminitis, ex- 
bones which enter into the formation posing the interior of the hoof when 
of the horse’s foot when in a healthy the coffin-bone has fallen from its orig- 
state. inal situation. 
entirely incapacitate the horse for labor; it is a chronic disease leading 
to a very opposite species of distortion, or to a bulging of the sole such 
as is here illustrated. 
A SECTION OF THE HORSE’S FOOT, ILLUSTRATING THE THE DEFORMITY WHICH ENSUES UPON 
DISTORTION WHICH CONSTITUTES PUMICE FOOT. DROPPING OF THE COFFIN-BONE. 
After dropping of the coffin-bone has taken place, it is commonly said 
that the hoof, struck upon the spot once occupied by the coffin-bone, 
emits a hollow sound; such is not the fact. 
The space supposed to be empty is immediately filled by an impure 
horn—a soft, transparent substance, which, if the animal be permitted 
to live, dries, or diminishes in bulk, and the front of the hoof falls in. 
The author once beheld, working in a lime-pit near Reigate, an aged 
animal which, some time previous, had suffered dropping of the coffin- 
bone; the animal was shod with leather, and had a shoe lifted from the 
ground by means of large calkins both before and behind. The hoof, 
however, was terribly misshapen; it hardly admits of such a description 
