610 
QUITTOR. 
my observations are the result of actual experiences in prac- • 
tice, one of more than ordinary proportions, during a period 
of over twenty years, and embracing never less than from 
500 to 1,000 street railway horses, in addition to a mixed prac¬ 
tice among all kinds of horses and cattle, larger than the aver¬ 
age number. Pardon my making the foregoing remarks 
about my practice, and also for suggesting that one of the im¬ 
portant features of any diseased condition, to the student, is to 
have a proper appreciation of its aetiology (its history), from 
the first adverse tissue change. When the hoof, from un¬ 
favorable conditions, begins to change (all or, in part) in form, 
size, or quality, and to crowd and encroach on the sub-horny, 
sub-coronary, and other structures that secrete and nourish 
healthy tissues, or that renew and repair such as have become 
degenerated and imperfect, even to those that are the deepest 
seated, lining the nutrient foremen, etc., so deep-seated, indeed, 
that no operation that is safe and practicable could possibly 
reach, or that nature could renew or repair in less than the 
average time which she demands to remove such defective 
tissues, and reproduce or transform into new. These adverse 
changes (degenerations) having been going on for perhaps a 
year or more, and having involved the whole quarter to its 
innermost recesses, she (nature) finally rebels, and a swelling 
with lameness and some discharge appears at the quarter 
coronet. This is true quittor. In my experience such a sinus 
could no more be cured in a month, or even hastened, than an 
egg could be hatched by some patent incubator in one- 
eighth, one-quarter, or one-half of the time it could be done 
by an old hen. Such a quittor could no more be cured in a 
month than a case of seedy-toe that had undermined the wall 
to within an inch of the coronet could be renewed m a month. 
These are prerogatives of old nature that she never tolerates 
being trifled with or coaxed from her control, not even by a 
bluff operation. I contend, therefore, that what is claimed to 
be excision of the cartilage has no more to do with the cure 
of quittor than punctured wounds of the foot or treads on 
the quarter have in causing quittor. I mean true quittor, 
which cannot be cured by incision until after Tom, Dick and 
