LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
605 
may arise from the horn growing thick and hard over an old 
corn. Or, lameness on a sudden may become excessive, in 
which case we may expect, knowing the horse has corns, to 
find a festered one. Lameness arising from corn is known to 
be at once relievable by removal of the exciting cause, as in 
the case of the pressing shoe ; or by the liberation given to 
the matter collected, as in the case of festered corn ; though, 
in the latter instance, some continuance or relapse of it may 
not be unexpected during the healing and horning-over process. 
The TREATMENT OF Corn is as much an affair of the farrier 
as of the veterinary surgeon ; indeed, in its unsuppurated con- 
dition, and especially in its chronic stage, it may be said to be 
more within the province of the former. Supposing the corn 
to be recent, and pressure from the shoe to be the occasion of 
it — which may be reasonably inferred to be the case if the heel of 
the shoe be found lying upon the corn-place — simply taking off 
the shoe, and replacing it by another of suitable make, so ap- 
plied that it will not only not take any bearing upon the corn- 
place, but will protect it from future pressure and injury, will 
be all that will be required to cure the ailment, or, in other 
words, to restore the horse from a state of lameness to one of 
soundness. 
PARING OUT the Corn, as farriers phrase it, becomes the 
first requisite operation as soon as the shoe is removed from 
the foot. The thumb of the smith, sometimes his pincers, is 
applied upon the corn to ascertain its condition — hard and un- 
impressible, soft and boggy, or springy and fluctuating, as the 
case may happen to be; and if it be found in a state in which 
no impression can be made upon it by the thumb, from the horn 
upon it being thick, or dry and hard, the paring, consisting in 
skilfully shaving the horn away in as thin flakes as possible, 
so as not to endanger cutting through the corn, commences : 
the operation being ever and anon suspended for a moment to 
admit of the re-application of the thumb, to ascertain what sub- 
stance of horn may still remain. In a corn in a strong narrow 
foot, having a thick coating of horn, a good deal of paring will 
be required before this effect is produced; on the contrary, 
when the foot is a flat and weak one, with sparingness of wall 
and sole, the utmost caution in paring, and frequent thumb- 
feeling, will be demanded, lest the drawing-knife should slip 
through the substance of the corn. When extensive ecchy- 
mosis is present, so that the flakes of horn come away deeply 
stained red, we may expect, in recent corn, on occasions to 
find some soft or boggy condition of the bottom of the corn, 
where the extravasated blood has not yet soaked through, or 
become inspissated and dried. Should this be found to be the 
