514 
PATHOLOGY OF LAMINITIS. 
forces ; for interstitious deposit will take place almost 
immediately. Professor Barlow states, that exudation takes 
place in from eight to ten hours, and rudimental horn is formed 
in four or five days, and in some cases in twenty-four hours. I 
fully believe in this ascertained fact, and it is often here 
that the dreaded contract is signed, signed too for life. 
ACTIVE LAMINITIS. 
That great and eminently distinguished veterinary writer, 
the late Mr.W. Percivall, when treating on this subject, says, 
“ There may be, and no doubt are, other morbid conditions 
from which the animal suffers most acutely for a time ; but 
there is no one in which his pain, while it is poignant in the 
extreme, is apt to be so protracted as in laminitis . 55 Further 
on, when describing the symptoms, he says, “Day and night, 
night and day, is but one continued scene of loud and sad 
complaint, the patient being found either lying and groaning 
and kicking about in torment, or else standing and breathing 
hard, and quick, and oppressively, looking most imploringly, 
and pawing or shifting his feet without intermission / 5 Such, 
then, being the description of our patient ; in this desperate 
state what can be done for him? In the answer to this 
question we find doctors disagree. Some authors say 
bleed him at the toe ; others say, by no means, but rather 
take blood from the coronet. Again, others say, bleed in the 
plate vein, and others prefer the neck ; but they all say 
bleed, and bleed freely. Some practitioners take off the 
shoes, and thin the soles; others say, on no account 
whatever thin the soles, for we want all the horn we can have 
in the front portion of the sole to keep up the coffin 
bone. Some steep the feet in hot water and apply hot 
poultices ; others say by no means do this, but rather use cold 
water and cold poultices. Some say physic at once and 
effectually; others contend and say, you really must avoid 
active purgatives. Some say insert a frog-seton ; others say 
no, that only increases the irritation. Some say let the 
animal stand on bog, or exhausted bark, or clay ; others 
again say no, but rather let him stand with the fore feet on 
level flag-stones without any moisture. Now I shall not 
attempt to define the why or wherefore that all this contra- 
diction exists, but content myself by simply stating such to 
be the case. 
In the remarks I am about to make on the treatment of 
acute laminitis, I would in the first place ask, — What would be 
thought of the engineer or architect, who, being requested to 
