RUPTURE OF THE PERFORANSTENDONS. 
necessary, and probably occupying* a space that may be more 
intelligibly and interestingly engaged; suffice it to say, removing 
the shoes, paring the soles, copious bleeding from the toes, fe¬ 
moral, and plate veins, placing the feet in warm water, followed 
by emollient poultices, physic, and sedative medicine, and, 
when the horse was upon his legs, supporting his weight by 
suspension, constituted the principal treatment; and the attendant 
symptomatic fever kept pace with the local pain. There was no 
mitigation of symptoms up to the evening of the third day; when, 
on examining the feet, I observed a groove or furrow around the 
coronets of the fore feet, with a turning up of the toes when 
weight came upon them. On further examination, I found this to 
arise from a loss of the perforans tendon, the coffin bones main¬ 
taining their proper position. On the following morning the 
same occurrence was observable in both hind feet. I now in¬ 
formed the owners of the horse that he was become for ever 
useless; and at my request he was destroyed. 
On examination of the fore feet, I commenced by detaching 
the external walls, and found the whole laminae in perfect health, 
and with difficulty could separate the horny and sensible parts. 
On detaching the horny sole and frog’, I observed considerable 
inflammation and extravasation, both in the substance and ex¬ 
ternally of the sensible frog, particularly at that part situated 
under the vaulted arch of the coffin bone, where the perforans 
tendon is inserted: there was no inflammation of the sole, ex¬ 
cept at its junction with the sides of the frog, and the laminae 
of the bars were uninflamed. On making a transverse incision 
through the anterior part of the frog, I exposed a cavity filled 
with a coagulum of arterial blood, and formed by a breaking 
away of the tendo perforans from its insertion into the coffin 
bone ; with small portions of the external plate of the bone at¬ 
tached to the extremity of the tendon, and small shreds of the 
tendon attached to the bone. I then removed the os coronae from 
its articulation with the coffin bone, and there saw T that the 
inferior navicular ligament was also broken from the coffin bone, 
the navicular bone having receded from the os pedis nearly half 
an inch. The articular surfaces forming the coffin joint were a 
good deal reddened with inflammation; the navicular joint cap¬ 
sule contained a clot of arterial blood, and its synovial mem¬ 
brane was inflamed: the capsule was entire, the breaking of the 
inferior navicular ligament had not opened its cavity, so that the 
blood found in it must have been deposited by its secreting 
vessels. The bursa in front of the perforans tendon, between it 
and the superior tip of the os coronae, was inflamed; all the inter¬ 
stitial cellular substance surrounding the coffin and pastern 
