608 
LAMENESS IN HOUSES. 
low ; there may or may not be changes evident externally around 
the coronet; nevertheless, pain and fever terribly harass the patient, 
until, exhausted by his sufferings, he dies of mortification. This 
has been known to happen so early as the second day, though other 
cases have run on so late as the fourteenth day, and then so termi- 
nated. After death we examine the feet. We find little or no dis- 
placement of parts : but we find serous effusion upon the surface ; 
the sensitive laminse full of blood and almost black, and, with the 
slightest force that can be used, detaching themselves from their 
union with the horny lamina. And even the coffin-bone — which 
was on one occasion, in which the hind feet proved gangrenous, 
sawn through by the late Mr. Field — is found to exhibit “ an 
almost equal degree of blackness*.” The peculiar situation of the 
sensitive laminse, between the coffin-bone and the hoof, renders 
them, under high congestive inflammation, very liable to become 
squeezed, and in a measure strangled, between the two hard sub- 
stances by which they are fenced ; and it is under such circum- 
stances, I repeat, that mortification or gangrene is produced in 
them ; of which the animal sinks rapidly, and dies at last almost 
unexpectedly, after having suffered days and nights of the intensest 
pain and agony. 
CHRONIC LAMINITIS, a form the acute disease will every now 
and then run into, instead of declaring its termination in one or 
other of the ways but now pointed out, and whose consequences 
are different in some important respects from any we have yet 
examined, will be considered in speaking of sub-acute laminitis. 
The Pathology of Laminitis brings some facts before us 
which, while they are of a different nature from others occurring 
under similar circumstances in other tissues, are important for 
us to become acquainted with, from their serving to explain cer- 
tain phenomena occurring in the course and termination of the 
disease. It is not only ascertained that all the soft tissues of the 
foot participate more or less in the inflammation, but it is equally 
so that the coffin-bone itself, which is perforate in every part for 
the passage of bloodvessels, likewise partakes of the inflammatory 
action. Now, by these perforating bloodvessels it is that the 
secretion of horn is carried on ; and since it is a law with secre- 
tory organs that under inflammation secretion is either augmented 
or diminished, or else altogether suppressed, so must we expect 
the secretion of horn to be in one of these ways affected under 
laminitis. At first, or during such time as inflammation is just 
beginning or moderately prevailing, or indeed at the time that the 
inflammation is on the decline, the secretion of horn may become 
augmented; but when, as in acute laminitis, inflammation runs 
* Posthumous Extracts from his Veterinary Records, p. 200. 
