538 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
being kept continually on the stretch, are either worried into a state 
of inflammation, or rendered peculiarly susceptible of such action. 
There is evidently, however, something more than this required to 
account for translation from the bowels to the feet. As all veteri¬ 
narians know, every now and then it will happen that laminitis is 
found supervening on over-purgation from physic, a case where 
the standing posture has certainly had nothing whatever to do with 
the causation; on the contrary, some check to the purgation, either 
from cold or some other cause, is almost always evident as the 
cause of translation. But a few months ago a case of this de¬ 
scription occurred in our own practice. A mare of gross habit, 
from having swelled legs, took a strong dose of physic. Purga¬ 
tion did not come on at the ordinary time; but the protracted in¬ 
action of the medicine was followed by excessive purgation, during 
the continuance of which the weather suddenly changed from hot to 
cold, the effect of which was a check to the action of the cathartic, 
the sequel, a severe attack of laminitis. In another case lamini¬ 
tis seized a horse while his physic was operating but mildly, and 
nothing had occurred out of the usual course of things, the weather 
being at the time sultry, and influenza raging the while. 
These may be regarded as examples of laminitis resulting from 
metastasis unconnected with any stress or unusual standing upon 
the feet: at the same time it ought not to be forgotten, that horses 
that are kept standing on board of ship during long voyages with¬ 
out any belly-cloths to rest their bodies upon, are known very 
frequently to become the subjects of laminitis, of which some 
very striking instances used to be mentioned by Coleman in his 
lectures. 
It will be seen from a paragraph extracted this month into our 
pages, that the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society have 
come to the resolution of appointing “a professional inspector,” 
with a view, to use their own words, “ to the collecting and per¬ 
petuating a body of authentic information in regard to the diseases 
of cattle, sheep, and pigs, and arresting their progress.” That 
cattle pathology, although a branch of the veterinary art, stands 
greatly in arrear of horse pathology, there is no denying, and it 
