LAMINITIS — ACUTE FOUNDER — FEVER IN THE FEET. 143 
without any further trouble you shall be sure to have the horse as 
sound as ever he was:” and then De Grey cuts the matter still 
shorter, for he says that, “ if your horse has not been foundered 
above four days, then with this receipt you may easily set him 
upright, and make him sound again in four days more.” 
The means, however, which appear to have been so successful in 
those days, unfortunately lost their efficacy in succeeding gene- 
rations, and with that loss fell also the sanguine predictions of the 
users thereof ; for, fifty years after, Sir William Hope says, “ now, 
where the foundering hath fallen down into the feet, horses are a 
long time recovering, so that a year’s time will produce but little 
amendment, therefore the best way is to sell them for the plough.” 
Fifty years later, Jeremiah Bridges, Farrier and Anatomist, whose 
very names and titles must carry conviction, tells us, “ that the 
progress of a founder is so quick and its consequences so pernicious, 
that you cannot be too speedy in your applications,” and that, when 
confirmed, “time, rest, and turning out in soft meadow ground, 
may be of service.” Towards the close of the eighteenth century, 
Snape, Farrier to His Majesty, informs us, “that it rarely happens 
that this dreadful malady is surmounted before the consequences 
of it are on the point of proving exceedingly pernicious, if not 
totally destructive, to the horse, who languishes beneath its 
violence.” 
True, methinks, I hear some one skilled in veterinary lore 
remark, up to this time, I fear, as you say, the results of those 
cases were unfortunate, and the treatment but little understood : 
but now the Veterinary College has been established, and surely the 
science and knowledge there brought into play must have bene- 
fitted this as well as all other disorders. Granted, as far as the 
treatment is concerned, for it became in many respects more 
enlightened ; and if it was not rendered more efficient, it was at 
least freed from those barbarisms which had previously encum- 
bered it : but as to the results let us see. St. Bel (I quote from 
Lawrence’s abstracts from his Lectures) declares that “ sometimes 
the inflammation is so rapid as to occasion a total falling off or 
shedding of the hoof in a few days, and then the part reproduced 
is always in some measure feeble and deformed : when the sepa- 
ration of the hoof does not take place, it becomes totally deformed : 
and, in a less violent founder, although there be no deformity in 
the foot, yet the horse treads with difficulty, especially at coming 
out of the stable.” — Bad enough all this; but then comes “our first 
Edward,” whose investigations into the structure and functions of 
the foot would alone always cause the name of Coleman to be 
remembered with respect. Did he profess to cure laminitis ? I 
well recollect hearing him decide the question in two sentences, 
