LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
487 
apparent embarrassment in the respiration, is such as is apt to lead 
the inexperienced to suppose that the lungs or the pleura is the seat 
of disease. Any forced attempt to step or walk, however, would 
immediately dissipate any such notion as this ; though it is possi- 
ble the same might induce a supposition that the kidneys were the 
seat of disease. The standing posture and the attempt to walk, 
with reference to the fore feet being the parts in pain, would by a 
little attention speedily correct so flagrant an error in judgment; 
and if the hind feet w'ere affected they would not be placed flat and 
firm upon the ground, as in nephritis ; added to which, the diag- 
nostic characters of disease in the kidneys will come to the practi- 
tioner’s aid to remove all manner of doubt on the question*. 
The Causes of acute Laminitis are said to be various. 
There is one, however, among them so predominant and influential 
in its character that it must never be lost sight of; and that is, 
work , or what may be construed into violence done to the feet. 
A horse with high stamping action, going for any great distance or 
for any length of time upon a macadamized road, or hard ground 
or pavement of any kind, will be a very likely subject for an attack 
of the disease ; and particularly one who, from being idle or at rest 
and unseasoned, is brought to do work of the kind suddenly or with- 
out any preparation. After feats of trotting, galloping, hunting and 
racing, horses become liable to an attack of laminitis, even though 
every precautionary training have been practised ; but in cases 
where no preparation has been made, as in the instance of horses 
young and recently broke, comparatively little exertion will be 
liable to bring it on. A five-year-old horse of my own, recently 
broke into harness, was seized with acute laminitis, on a hot sum- 
mer’s day, when the ground was dry and hard, after a drive of not 
more than five miles, and that at an exceedingly moderate pace. 
And Mr. Braby, whose experience among cart and dray-horses is 
acknowledgedly great and valuable, informs me that young horses 
of this description, wLen they first enter on their London work, are 
particularly obnoxious to the disease, owing, he believes, to their 
wearing heavy shoes, and working day after day in them upon 
stone pavement ; the injurious tendency of which is not a little 
augmented by the great weight — -as much as two tons on an 
average — the horses while at work have to sustain upon their 
backs. The bevelling of their shoes, as is customary, inwards — 
in place of outwards — from imposing the superincumbent weight 
upon the border of the crust of the hoof, and upon the nails pene- 
trating it, may likewise conduce to such an untoward result. 
The act of standing for any great length of time upon any dry 
* See the Author’s “ Hippopathology,” vol. ii, p. 342. 
