QUITTOR. 
575 
you to hasty conclusions. The medical profession is easily 
thrown into ecstatic convulsions over wonderful discoveries in 
medical science, but the “ sobering off ” is sometimes distress¬ 
ing, both to the profession and to the would-be investigator. 
With a liberal education, a thorough knowledge of the 
mother tongue, and the natural sciences, well trained in his pro¬ 
fession and with a true spirit of scientific inquiry, I feel sure the 
veterinarian of the future will be in the vanguard of the march 
of progress in the new century that is dawning. I think it is 
Carlyle who says that a people’s bible should be its own history. 
So let it be with our profession. The veterinarian of the past 
has written the old testament, the veterinarian of the future 
must write the new. 
QUITTOR. 
By Geo. H. Berns, D. V. S., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
( ■ -* f * i 
Read before the Annual Meeting of the New York State V. M. Society, 
Sept. 9, 1899. 
Ouittor in horses has been recognized for years, and is ac¬ 
knowledged by all veterinarians of experience as an extremely 
unmanageable disease, testing the skill of the veterinarian, 
taxing the patience of the owners to the utmost, and in many 
instances terminating unfavorably after months of careful at¬ 
tendance. 
The low organization and lack of vitality of the structures 
involved, and the unfavorable position in which they are sit¬ 
uated anatomically are the chief causes of the obstinate character 
of true cartilaginous quittor. 
The lateral fibro-cartilage if once inflamed, which may oc¬ 
cur from a large variety of causes, slowly but surely becomes 
necrotic in spots, suppurates, and abscesses form, rupturing at 
the point where the least resistance is offered—that is, in an 
upward direction from the original seat of suppuration, leaving 
after partial healing fistulous tracts, frequently irregular in 
their course and several inches in length, which discharge a 
