488 • 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
hard surface, particularly where vigilance and more or less exertion 
on the part of the animal is continually required to maintain that 
standing, as is the case with horses on board of ship, has been 
known to produce the disease extensively. And that it was the 
continuance of the standing posture which caused the evil, ap- 
peared from the fact of such horses commonly escaping the disease 
as had been known to crouch or sit in the ship. In the expedition 
to Corunna, the late Mr. Castley had an excellent opportunity of 
observing this. That beautiful brigade of cavalry, consisting of 
the 7th, 10th and 15th Hussars, landed at Corunna about the 
20th Nov. 1808. They had been on ship-board, owing to con- 
trary winds, upwards of three weeks. A few days after disem- 
barking, they marched up the country, by squadrons, in daily suc- 
cession, occasioning thereby the last squadron to be later in its 
march by nine days than the first. Mr. Castley himself marched 
a day after the last squadron, and found at Betanzos, the first stage, 
twenty horses left behind with fever in their feet, the greater part 
of them belonging to the squadron that marched first from Corunna. 
And such continued to be the case, more or less, all along the line 
of march. Still, the first suffered much more than those that 
marched last; a circumstance inducing Mr. Castley to believe that 
the immediate exertion the horses were put to, after having stood 
upon their feet so long on board of ship, had much to do in causing 
the disease. The suspension girths with which ships are now or 
ought to be fitted up, together with a clay or other soft and cool 
standing, is the precaution recommended to be adopted to pre- 
vent this grievous consequence. Railroad travelling, when the 
journey or long continuance in the train happens to be great, is 
not unlikely to have the same evil tendency. 
Drinking a large quantity of cold water while heated has, it is 
said, I believe on sufficient authority, been followed by laminitis. 
The ancients thought so, and modern practice seems to confirm 
this. Gorged stomach, likewise, has been known to occasion the 
disease. In the same volume of The VETERINARIAN* from which 
I have been quoting, Mr. Castley informs us, he once heard Pro- 
fessor Dick, in his Lecture, say, “ he had frequently seen laminitis 
arise from overloading or gorging the stomach with food. A horse, 
perhaps, gets loose, and eats an extraordinary quantity of any kind 
of grain : an attack of inflammation of the feet is likely to be the 
consequence. And such is the sympathy between the stomach, 
the alimentary canal, and the cutaneous surface, that, if we regard 
the hoofs as a continuation of the common integuments, this is 
not to be wondered at.” The action of cold water upon a heated 
body may be similarly accounted for. 
* Veterinarian for 1830 , vol. iii, p. 198 - 9 . 
