DISEASES. 



677 



metastasis has also been seen toward the lumbar region, and this 

 is much more commonly believed from the fact that there is more 

 motion at the hip than at any other joint during locomotion, and 

 also because the back and the loins are more or less arched. In 

 fact, laminitis has been, by some, designated as an affection of the 

 loias ; some have looked upon it as a rheumatism of that region. 

 All these errors have originated in the peculiar motion of the ani- 

 mal while walking, or of its peculiar mode of resting when stand- 

 ing stUl. We have also observed an attack af complete myelitis 

 as a complication of laminitis. 



f. — The most common complication met with in chronic lam- 

 initis is an affection which we might have treated as a special sub- 

 ject had we not, upon principle, considered it as a sub-inflamma- 

 tory state of acute founder of the foot. Aji attack of laminitis 

 which has not ended by resolution in five, ten, or fifteen days at 

 most, takes a character of persistency which, in most cases, ends 

 in absolute incurabUity. To properly study chronic laminitis we 

 must observe it when the alterations which characterize it are ac- 

 compHshed. When we have completed the consideration of the 

 pathological changes, we will examine the intermediate period, 

 and discuss the mechanism by which these alterations take place 

 in relation to the pathological anatomy. 



The first thing observed is the 

 change of form in the hoof (Pig. 

 515). The nail of a horse's foot 

 easily recalls the form of a Chinese 

 shoe (KnoUhuf, of Germany). The 

 hoof seems to have also lost its 

 varnish and its suppleness in the 

 points corresponding to the dis- 

 eased parts. It is, besides, brittle, and seems to have lost part 

 of its connection with the remaining parts of the foot, and there 

 is a change in the direction of the wall, the fibres of which, 

 instead of being oblique to the ground, assume an almost hori- 

 zontal direction. The foot seems as if flattened from above down- 

 ward, and the lines which bound its surface fol-m a well-marked 

 obtuse angle with that of the coronary region. The anterior wall 

 of the foot also forms a well-marked projection forward, from 

 which results a great exaggeration of the antero-posterior diame- 

 ter of the nail with the transverse diameter and the oval form of 





Chronic Laminitis. 



