LAMENESS IN HOUSES. 615 
sometimes l have felt quite convinced that such extreme cold has 
provoked mortification. 
After we have drawn as much blood as we dare from the system, 
and have followed that up by topical blood-letting; and after the 
physic has worked well, and we have paid all due attention to the 
setons with the warm applications, or to the cold practice without 
setons, to the feet, and still the animal continues suffering keenly and 
cruelly, we are induced to make trial of another class of remedies, to 
endeavour to assuage or stifle the poor sufferer’s pains. Some practi- 
tioners — among whom, as we have seen, stands Mr. Gabriel — suc- 
ceed the copious evacuation of the bowels by fever medicine ; others 
have recourse to narcotics. I must confess, my own experience in 
this part of the treatment has not yielded much in favour of either 
of these modes of allaying fever and pain Feeling that the source 
and seat of pain is the foot, I have been in the habit of directing 
my therapeutic measures to the relief of that, with but little regard 
— perhaps not so much as I ought to have had — for the nervous 
commotion and sympathetic suffering set up in the system. I 
therefore hear with pleasure practitioners asserting, that ether and 
opium and belladonna are so many useful remedies for this purpose, 
and therefore ought to be used at this stage of our proceedings. 
Ether may be exhibited as the common fever drink ; and digitalis 
may be given with nitre, & c., with similar febrifuge intentions; 
though, for my own part, I should have more reliance upon the 
former than the latter remedy. If I gave opium, I would admi- 
nister it in a solid form and in full doses, say a couple of drachms 
or more, once or twice in the course of the twenty-four hours. 
Belladonna is a great favourite with some veterinarians of the 
modern school. The extract, they tell us, may be exhibited in 
one or two-drachm doses two or three times a-day with signal 
advantage. 
In regard to any further applications to the feet, so long as the 
disease continues to advance or remains painful, we must persist 
in the use of such means — in particular of the poultices — as 
will be most likely to create and encourage discharge from the 
setons; which must, as directed by Mr. Gabriel, be kept running 
for some days after even the poultices have been discontinued. 
Should the case — as is likely to happen — at this period run into a 
chronic form, topical remedies of another class may be called for, 
besides attention to the feet, to the shoes, & c., all which will come 
under notice when sub-acute laminitis shall be considered. 
In January 1837, Professor Ferdinando de Nanzio, Director of 
the Veterinary College at Naples, who was at the time on a visit 
to this country, laid before the Veterinary Medical Association, at 
our Veterinary College, a paper on the subject before us, develop- 
