WILLIAMSON BRYDEN. 
611 
Harry have treated it for over six months. Then some opera¬ 
tor pretends to cut it out, charges a large fee, and it gets 
well in a month or so. He also gets the credit for a cure that 
he has no right to. The fact of the matter is, it has then, as 
it were, “ run out,” and would have got well in common 
course in spite of their interference. It could not then be 
prevented from getting well, unless complicated by some 
unusual interference, sometimes called surgery, heroic sur¬ 
gery—a very bastard surgery, too, I consider such work. 
The other cases that get well after an operation are those 
said to be caused by treads and accidents, which could not 
possibly cause true quittor, not even by a coincidence. How 
could it? The early historv of the case is entirely inconsistent 
and incompatible ; the adverse changes in the tissues of the 
quarter had not prepared it for this form of disease. 
Let us take, for example, a case where, from a defective 
coronet, the coffin-bone has become adversely affected, the 
cartilage elements of the pedal articulation being most in¬ 
volved ; the process or function ol “ selection and appropria¬ 
tion ” has not been properly performed, and in the disturbed 
state of the parts, this cartilage element has been transplanted 
or transferred by the circulation to the wings of the os pedis; 
such a piece of cartilage might be pared off with impunity, 
but this is uncalled-for patchwork, and quite another affair 
from a case where the quarter is all degenerated, a change 
that has been going on perhaps for months or years. 
During the early adverse-tissue changes of true quittor 
the disease can be arrested, but not after the sinus has opened 
in the usual way ; then an average period, of over seven and 
a half months, is demanded, according to my experience and 
philosophy ; then a cure can be guaranteed, and so can the 
time required to effect it be predicted with almost unvarying 
exactness. These are facts that can be demonstrated in every 
case. 
What will the pathologist of the future think of the veter¬ 
inarians who flourished in 1893, and who could not discrimi¬ 
nate between fistulas, sinuses of the foot, the different sinuses 
of the withers, or the different sinuses of the poll? Their 
