American Veterinary Review, 
AUGUST, 1881. 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
THE HORSE’S FOOT, 
By A. Zundel. 
(Continued from page 136.) 
Pathological Anatomy and Nature of the Disease. —It has 
always been considered that a morbid condition susceptible of 
producing disorders so severe as those produced by canker, must 
necessarily be a deep affection, essential and important to the or¬ 
ganic structure, and depending on a complete transformation in 
its texture. And, indeed, it is the impression which predomina¬ 
ted from the time of Solleysel down to the foundation of veter¬ 
inary schools and which still exists with Girard, who considers 
canker as a gnawing ulcer which changes and alters the tissues it 
invades, and even with Vatel and Hurtrel D’Arboval, who looks 
upon canker as the carcinoma of the reticular structure of the 
foot. 
It is but recently that these ideas have been abandoned. 
Dupuy, in 1827, considered canker as a hypertrophy of the fibres 
of the hoof, admitting at the same time the disintegrations and 
softening of those same fibres occasioned by an ammoniacal sap- 
onization produced by an altered secretion. 
In 1841, Mercier expressed the opinion that canker is noth¬ 
ing more than a chronic inflammation of the reticular tissue of the 
foot, characterized by diseased secretions of this apparatus. 
It is now known that there is in canker, no essential altera- 
