606 
.AMEN ESS IN HORSES. 
material deformity of hoof or consequential lameness, his disease 
is properly considered to have terminated in resolution. So that 
resolution becomes the termination beyond all others to be sought 
after; — the only termination, in fact, which leaves the foot free 
from any such alteration of structure as amounts to disorganization, 
and consequent impairment or destruction of its functions. About 
the third or fourth or fifth day we hail with joy symptoms of the 
disease giving way. The pain and fever are diminished. The horse 
stands firmly and without flinching upon his feet, which have lost 
their burning heat, and even moves them with tolerable willing- 
ness and ease ; and does so of his own accord, to change his posture 
or walk round to his manger. For now his appetite begins to re- 
turn, and altogether his aspect is changed from despondency to 
comparative cheerfulness. Not, after all, that the feet are returned 
to their normal condition, as, in a strict pathological sense, resolu- 
tion would seem to imply. Such, in practice, we do not find to 
hold true : effusion, more or less, invariably occurring, and, for a 
time at least, remaining. 
EFFUSION, therefore, is in a measure involved in resolution, 
though the meaning commonly assigned to it is a termination in 
advance of that stage. Instead of the crisis we are about the third 
or fifth day anxiously looking for, the disease continues, though 
with unincreased violence, a day or two or three longer, and then 
the pain and suffering abate, and the animal appears to be sur- 
mounting his troubles; though, as but too frequently follows, it is 
but to experience others of another kind, arising from the effusion 
into, and consequent disorganization of, the parts within his hoofs, 
which is at the time proceeding. Our earliest indications of this 
are, some marked alteration in the form of the wall of the affected 
hoof in front — some unnatural slope or falling-in of it, and this is 
accompanied by sinking of the sole ; not to the extent to constitute 
pumice , but still enough to shew that alterations are taking place, 
in consequence of disease, in the relative situation and connexion 
of the parts within the hoof. When the effusion is more extensive 
as well as of a more intense character than this, we perceive indi- 
cations of mischief going on at the coronet. The coronary body 
loses its rotund plumpness; becomes flattened and even sunken, 
and when pressed by the finger has a soft boggy feel, and pits 
upon pressure, arising from a sero-lymphy effusion, into its sub- 
stance, which the pressure causes to ooze out. This is accompanied 
by separation of the encircling border of new-formed horn, with its 
thin wafery edging, from the true skin, with which in health it is 
continuous and inseparable ; and sometimes to such an extent, that 
the finger insinuated between the coronary border of the hoof and 
the sensitive parts underneath, on either side, finds a ready passage 
