498 REMARKS ON MR. CHERRY’S PAPER ON CORONITIS. 
to trouble you with a few remarks, not with the intention of 
contradicting any assertions contained in his paper, but merely 
with a view of eliciting farther evidence, in order more fully to de- 
monstrate the existence of such an important disease. 
The study of the foot and its diseases has always been considered 
by me as a subject of paramount importance to the veterinary 
surgeon ; but from all the observations that I have made on the 
disease now before us, I have not been, nor indeed am I, induced 
to consider it as being dependent upon any one part of the foot 
being deranged or diseased, but to arise by virtue of a peculiar 
susceptibility of irritation existing in the whole of the various 
structures of that organ, and not confined exclusively to any one 
of them, which irritation I have known frequently to remain for 
very lengthened periods, or even after comparatively slight diseases. 
We have also many instances of this disease occurring in feet 
where it would be impossible to detect the slightest increase of heat 
or any other abnormal symptom, such as shoulder lameness, &c. 
In these cases of long standing we are certain not only to have di- 
minished size of the foot of the affected limb, but also an alteration 
in its texture — it gradually becoming more brittle and harsh. Some 
cases I have been in the habit of attributing to hereditary predis- 
position, in the absence of any other assignable cause, an instance 
of which I will here relate, it having occurred to me but a very 
short time since. 
A gentleman came to our forge with a horse, it having unfortu- 
nately just thrown a shoe from one of its fore feet. During the 
time he remained in the forge I happened to notice that the foot 
from which the shoe had been lost was not so large as the opposite 
one by a considerable degree, nor did it appear at all so healthy, 
the fibrous texture of it being more plainly developed, the frog- 
band looking ragged, and the inferior edge of the crust being much 
cracked and broken, although the shoe had but just been cast, and 
the injury received by the foot in consequence very slight. I 
inquired of the gentleman who brought him, and who proved to be 
the owner, whether this circumstance was very rare (alluding to the 
losing of the shoe) ; upon which he replied, “ No, it was not, but, 
on the contrary, a very frequent occurrence.” In answer to farther 
questions put to him by me, he said that he had bred him himself, 
and had not ever parted from him a week, and was confident that 
it was not owing to any perceptible disease having affected it, but 
that it had been so from the time he was taken from the field as a 
colt. He generally stood pointing the foot, but had never shewn 
lameness. 
This, if I am not putting a wrong construction on the words 
“ brittleness, diminished secretion, and harshness of the horn,” is 
