718 OPEEATIONS ON THE FOOT. 



always forward, running at times in straight lines, at others ir- 

 regularly. The tracts frequently communicate and discharge a 

 granular, serous and thin pus, of pale greyish color, generally 

 odorless, or slightly sanious, containing greenish particles, which 

 are but pieces of diseased fibro-cartilage. The pus dries up on 

 the surface and adheres to the hoof and to the hair, and some- 

 times irritates the surface of the skin. If one of these fistula be- 

 come cicatrized, a fluctuating tumor soon appears, close to it, 

 which rapidly ulcerates, and then ^ives rise to another fistula. If 

 the disease is quite old, the hoof of the quarter corresponding to 

 the necrosed cartilage, loses its perioplic band, becoming rough, 

 ramy and cracked, and the wall is thickened, because the irritation 

 of the coronary band has stimulated its growth. This change in 

 the condition of the wall varies with the length of time the dis- 

 ease has existed, and consequently, it indicates its duration quite 

 accurately, when one remembers that the hoof grows downward 

 about one centimeter in each month. 



T\Tien cartilaginous quittor is the sequelae or complication 

 of the suppurative com, of a punctured wound by a nail of the 

 shoe, or any other affection of the foot, the symptoms proper to 

 these diseases are first observed, though the lameness is greater, 

 and the fistulse of the quittor is evident. Often, however, this, 

 instead of being external and on the coronet, is situated at the in- 

 ferior part of the foot, at the internal face of the inferior border 

 of the wall, upon the sole, and sometimes connected with the 

 wound of some of those affections of the foot. 



II. JPathological Anatomy. — When one examines the cartil- 

 age affected with the necrosis proper of quittor, he always finds 

 lesions in proportion to the intensity and the age of the disease. 

 It is seldom, however, that the portions of the cartilage which 

 have undergone the green degeneration, constituting the caries, 

 reaches more than one centimeter in extent; they have the form 

 of a small plate, of a green color, ordinarily elongated, and adhe- 

 rent to the healthy parts of the cartilage by one of its extremities, 

 that which is more forward and the deepest. Others have com- 

 pared it to the green growth of a seed in germination. The 

 points of the fibro-cartilage which are in immediate contact with 

 the carious portion, have also a slightly pale greenish hue. These 

 are already diseased ; there is already a beginning of necrosis ; in 

 the remainder of its extent the exfoliation is separated from the 



