a spatula is to be spread rather thickly one of the following lini Apply the pledget in such manner that the liniment lies in close contact with the diseased surfaces, and maintain it there by tying its ends tight around the front of the pastern. Should one pledget not be sufficient for this purpose, apply a second, and even a third. As a farther security to the dressings, it is advisable to envelop the whole in an eight-tailed bandage, of a size suitable to the dimensions of the pastern and fetlock; the tails being tied in front, and two of them encircling the leg above the fetlock, in order that no displacement may happen through the flexure of the joint. This done, give the horse a strong purge, and let every thing remain quiet until the operation of the physic has subsided. By the third or fourth day, the legs will have tumefied; the physic being then set or setting. become greatly This is the time for the removal of the dressings. We shall find the heels wonderfully improved; so much so, perhaps, as to require nothing further than daily sprinklings with astringent powder. And as for the swelling of the legs, that will speedily disappear on exercise, which should now be prolonged to two or three hours at a time. A diuretice ball given daily will aid in its dispersion. Should a renewal of the same dressing-the liniment—be deemed requisite, we must take care to have the tumefaction removed from the legs before they be bound up afresh. Chronic, malignant, grapy grease-a disease that formerly made such ravages in the ordnance and cavalry services as to be the occasion of many horses being, year after year, sacrificed as incurable-is nowadays but rarely met with; at least in any establishment, private or public, where veterinary aid is ever sought; for it is only the grossest neglect or mismanagement that could possibly lead to its production. By way of a sort of record of what used to happen, I will relate a case of this description; and one that will serve-since the treatment adopted proved completely successful-at the same time to shew in what the method of cure should consist. On the 19th June, 1821, was placed under my father's care for treatment, a chesnut mare, seven years old, and rather low in condition, who had suffered from malignant grease for upwards of two years. The disease originated in the ordinary way, and has arrived at its present height and malignancy from neglect, continued exertion of the parts, and occasional maltreatment. All four heels, but particularly the hind, are studded with prominent grapes, thinly clad with bristled hairs, through which their bare surfaces appear intensely reddened, and here and there issuing blood. In places where there are no grapes the skin exhibits a red, rough, elephantiasical aspect. The grapes extend for several inches above the fetlock; but they are all situated at the posterior parts of the legs. The hollows of the heels are entirely covered with ulcerated grapes. A greasy and extremely offensive matter issues from every part of the morbid surface, which lodges in the crevices between the grapes, as if so much oil had been poured thereon. On the same afternoon on which she was admitted, my father submitted her to the following painful operation :-Having properly secured her, standing, with a sharp scalpel he commenced paring off the grapes from the hind heels upon a level with the surface of the skin. In doing this he found it necessary to have heated irons near him to stanch the hemorrhage as he proceeded; which, owing to the high vascularity of these excrescences, was very considerable: though the cautery was prepared for another object—that of destroying the morbid surface from which the grapes had so long been growing. All the larger grapes having been in this manner removed (and they proved to be cartilaginous, some even horny, in their composition), the remainder of the diseased surface was lightly seared over, and the mare was returned to the stable, and dressed with the following liniment, spread upon pledgets of tow, and confined by many-tailed bandages: Take of Powdered blue vitriol.. Powdered alum... Linseed oil - Ziv tbij.-Mix. A brisk purge was given after the operation. 24th. The diseased parts were covered over with sloughs; which being wiped off, the surface presented a raw and highly vascular appearance, and now disclosed many smaller grapes that had been left unpared. The mare was cast, the fore legs were operated upon in the same manner as the hind ones had been, and the hind legs were also rid, by the knife and cautery, of many grapes, which before were concealed by larger and more prominent excrescences. The parts were afterwards dressed as on the first occasion; and some of the unguent. ferri acetatis was applied to her frogs, in which thrushes had made their appearance since last dressing. her 27th. Since the 24th some little fever has been hanging about her; appetite has been impaired, she is tucked up, and has evidently suffered from pain. She was walked out, and afterwards dressed as before. 30th.-A raw surface pretty free from grapy excrescences now presents itself. Her legs were simply smeared over, without any pledgets or bandages, with the ointment, and (the weather being warm) she was afterwards turned into a grass paddock. July 4th.-An ichorous discharge, but which is not very offensive, issues from the ulcerated surfaces. Ointment repeated. 9th. The surface looking florid and healthy. What grapes still remained unpruned were to-day touched, by means of a feather, with nitric acid. They instantly turned yellow, and a process of solution began in them. The surface generelly was washed with blue solution 3j to 3j. 11th.-Sloughs caused by the acid, separating, and leaving deep excavations. Blue solution repeated. 15th. The heels have begun to granulate, and in places are shewing signs of cicatrization. Alum ointment. 30th. Since the 15th the dressings have been mild, and such as are promotive of the granulating process. The heels are making great progress towards health. After this, nothing worth mentioning was done. Not merely a new surface, but in most places a new skin, was eventually formed, and the mare was ultimately restored to her master perfectly sound, with only some trifling induration of the parts which had so long been the seat of such noisome disease. 312 CHAPPED OR CRACKED HEELS. It very often happens in the winter season, or during the continuance of wet and cold weather, that chaps or cracks, as they are called, are discovered in the heels of the hind legs of horses— rarely in the fore ones-and that they have made their appearance without any previous or accompanying grease: of which disease, be it remembered, under other circumstances, they constitute a part. They consist in extended linear ulcerations, running in a transverse direction, and in their incipient or formative state strike us with a notion that the skin has really cracked in those places a notion not altogether without foundation, since it would appear that they often owe their origin, in a measure, to extension of the skin at a time when its oily suppling secretion is either defective or altogether suppressed. The same thing is still more likely to happen when the legs are already in the condition called filled, and are naturally of that coarse description so well known under the epithet of fleshy. This seems to be the history of the case in stabled horses :-the legs become filled, congested, inflamed perhaps; the secretion disordered or suppressed; the skin stretched, cracked and ulcerated. But in regard to horses that are turned out during the winter season, and whose legs become incessantly exposed to cold and moisture, ulceration seems to arise in their heels from loss or diminution of vital energy-from want of power in the animal's constitution to maintain heat and animation in a part constantly under the influence of cold and wet, and so remote from the source of circulation as the heel of the hind extremity. The skin loses its vitality, sloughs and ulcerates. Horses whose heels are naturally clothed with long hair, and which have long gone unshorn, become, from having their legs trimmed, more susceptible of such influences, and in course more liable to grease and cracked heels : though there is an evil in the untrimmed condition, from their being likely to retain the wet and harbour dirt, and fall into disorder in that manner. THE TREATMENT of these ulcerations must be regulated by CHAPPED OR CRACKED HEELS. 313 their origin, duration, and condition at the time. Horses that have contracted them in wet should be removed into dry situations. Those that have generated them in the stable will commonly be benefitted by purging, sometimes even by bleeding, by way of cooling and fining their swollen and inflamed legs. Should the ulceration not yet have penetrated through the substance of the skin, little else will be required to heal the sore than the constant application of bran poultices: dressings of a mild and simple kind, such as common astringent powder, weak solutions of white or blue vitriol or alum, tincture of myrrh, or benzoin, &c. will aid the healing process; but the principal thing to be attended to at least, so all my experience tells me--is the poulticing. An excellent dressing for sores weakly or sluggish in their granulative operations, is a sprinkling of finely pulverized red precipitate. Where an ulceration, however, has made its way through the skin, it is likely to become rather a troublesome, and probably an intractable affair. The borders of the surrounding skin appear red and prominent, and, perhaps, everted; while its bottom is dingy and sloughy, and exuding an ichorous discharge. This carbuncular sort of sore will require a thorough sloughing out for which purpose some practitioners make use of lunar caustic, others of the actual cautery; though, for my own part, I prefer the butter of antimony; or, should that not succeed, the nitric acid; the object being to destroy the sloughy cellular substance, and produce an entire new bottom to the ulcer. The caustic dressing had better be applied with a little tow-mop: previously to its application, the surface of the sore should be wiped dry with soft tow; but not harshly wiped, lest it bleed. After being dressed, let the heel be enveloped in a bran poultice; and this should not only be persisted in until the separation of the slough, but until such time as the ulcer is nearly healed the granulations, as soon as they make their appearance, being either stimulated or mildly repressed by one or other of the dressings aforementioned, or even by the application of dry tow alone, which will often be found to answer the latter purpose better than any medicament. The French commonly cauterize sores of this description: using the budding-iron lightly : |