574 LAMINITIS AND NAVICULAU DISEASE. 
weight. Should such an alteration or change take place in 
the coffin bone, it would thereby become more attenuated at 
its edges and bulging on its under surface, or pumiced, and 
all this irrespective of any disease going on in the laminae. 
Mr. Seeker, in fact, in his essay remarks —“ The subject of 
laminitishas been observed to go shuffling and getting gradu¬ 
ally worse for some time previous to the attack/ 5 
In my papers in the Veterinarian for 1855 I term this 
<{ the passive stage/ 5 and it is in this particular condition that 
any little extra circumstance, such as a change in keep, or 
even a dose of cathartic medicine, the act of shoeing, some 
extra knocking about, or even standing still a little too long 
in the stable—anything, in fact—is sufficient to produce the 
active stage, as unmistakably as is a twange of the gout or 
toothache in the human being. 
Have we not constant proof of various tissues and organs 
degenerating? And are we to suppose that the plantar 
organs are wholly exempt from the law which we see almost 
every other tissue in the animal economy to be subservient 
to? How often, do we have evidence that the brain is under¬ 
going a process of degeneracy—softening—and this, too, in 
the man of apparently strong mind, and who w T as certainly 
clear-headed enough up to a particular age? The exact 
period of such a change will doubtless very much depend 
upon the individual being exposed to favorable or to unfavor¬ 
able circumstances. Is it not true that the subject of such a 
disease is observed to become by degrees rather crotchety or 
eccentric, and often that some slight or sudden shock to the 
nervous system develops complete imbecility or unsoundness 
of mind. So also with active laminitis. How often also do 
we see a man in easy circumstances, who has never passed 
through trials, have the functions of his brain impaired, he by 
degrees becoming of unsound mind; whilst another contends 
with every kind of trying circumstance, sustains the most 
violent shocks from the most dire calamities, but still his 
reason firmly retains her seat? How is this? It seems to 
me to be simply attributable to a difference in the consti¬ 
tutional tendency. 
Illustrative of the same point, we have other diseases— 
degeneracy or softening of the liver, ramollissement, de¬ 
generacy or wasting of the lungs, phthisis, &c. In each 
particular subject, liable to these complaints, a specific or 
special tendency exists, which may be described as an irre¬ 
sistible, uncontrollable diathesis, continually drifting towards 
one destination in each individual. For instance, the true 
subject of laminitis is almost certain to be exempt from any 
