818 
LA3VJINITIS AND NAVICULAR DISEASE. 
Do the same Phenomena attend Laminitis ? 
We have pain—intense, excruciating pain—but there is an 
absence of the natural law or phenomenon accompanying and 
attendant upon true inflammation or inflammation proper; 
or else we must have, as an inevitable consequence, the neces¬ 
sary result —it is a natural process. We must have pus form 
all around the foot, decay, destruction, and sloughing of the 
laminae in every severe case; this result we could not help; 
everyday facts show us the truth of this theory. In those 
cases of laminitis where the disease rages with the utmost 
intensity we never have the true terminations of inflammation 
•/ 
resulting; we have debility in the sentient vessels, bulging of 
the inferior surface of the bone; effusion. A train of processes 
are set up, but none of them resemble those attendant upon 
true inflammation. We will now inquire— 
If Laminitis is not Inflammation , what is it? 
I have endeavoured to show that it is not attended with the 
same phenomena that attend true inflammatory action ; I be¬ 
lieve, with that distinguished teacher Professor Spooner, that 
it is to all intents and purposes belonging to the rheumatic 
class of disease, and I also believe that it is essentially of here¬ 
ditary origin. You call my attention to “ a severe case of 
laminitis, which after a few hours of suffering, passes off/* Do 
you believe that most severe inflammatory action can take 
place in such a tissue as this, and quit it radically upon the 
instant ? No; let me tell you, in such a case as the one 
you mention, if there is no obvious cause of it, such as new 
tight shoes, &c., I take it for granted it is a proof of morbid 
susceptibility and defective condition of the feet. Can you 
say that it is not a precursor, or is incompatible with the exist¬ 
ence of disease in the feet in one form or another ? We must 
not be over-confiding; disease is delusive ; in a few weeks the 
same symptons occur again; it is intermittent; in a proba¬ 
tionary state. Depend upon it, it is a temporary cropping out 
of a permanent defect; it is at all times critical; it is por¬ 
tentous. I have no sympathy with the philosophy which 
looks with complacency upon an ominous symptom, although 
it may be, on this occasion, temporary, as indicating a defect, 
and allowing it to drift on to permanence. To me such an 
instance would intimate a tangible, apparent constitutional 
defect, although of an unsettled existence. We will now 
ask ourselves the question— 
