LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
483 
bear. Mr. Spooner, in his edition of White, says, “it most fre- 
quently attacks horses whose crusts and laminae are weak and very 
obliquely placed.” And, if we come to reason on the matter, it 
seems but natural that such should be the case, since in such kind 
of feet the laminae are most called into action. Jn feet disposed to 
take the disease, shoeing may have something to do with its pro- 
duction. Horses transported from mild or cold climates into hot 
countries are disposed to breed the disease. D’Arboval informs us 
such occurrences are not uncommon in Spain. The taking of the 
bearing of the shoe off these parts of the sole, joining the crust, 
which are able to bear it, and throwing the entire stress upon the 
edge of the crust and upon the nails, as too commonly is done in 
ordinary shoeing, may likewise conduce to the production of the 
disease. 
Three Kinds of Laminitis are recognised in practice, viz. 
the acute , the sub-acute, and the metastatic ; the chronic being 
rather the declining or convalescent stage of one of these three 
kinds of disease than a distinct species or variety ; and the epide- 
mic only an occasional, and I believe but a rare, character assumed 
by laminitis. 
Acute Laminitis. 
Were a veterinary surgeon asked the question from what dis- 
ease a horse experienced the most suffering, he would, methinks, 
require little reflection before he determined in favour, or rather in 
disfavour, of the one I am about to describe. There may be, and 
no doubt are, other morbid conditions from which the animal suf- 
fers most acutely for the time ; but there is no one under which his 
suffering, while it is poignant in the extreme, is apt to be so pro- 
tracted as laminitis. At this we have no reason to be surprised, when 
we come to remember that the impaired tissues are peculiar in their 
texture, besides being placed under peculiar conditions, in being 
situate between two hard bodies — the hoof without and the coffin- 
bone within : so that, when the tumour of inflammation would 
take place, the opposition of these unyielding bodies, and conse- 
quent squeezing of the nervous filaments, morbidly sensitive as 
they now are, produces pain in the extreme, probably some such 
in character as whitlow produces in our own persons. And this 
exquisite pain it is, combined with the situation in which it is felt, 
that gives rise to a series of symptoms at once distressing and 
peculiar in their nature. 
The Approach of acute Laminitis is not, as has been repre- 
sented, at all times sudden; more commonly some symptoms of 
lameness or fumbling going will usher in the attack. A marked 
difference will be discovered in the animal’s gait : he will step 
