metimes be discovered by means of a probe to descend from
the coronet beneath the hoof. The affected animal is excessively lame,
and may possibly suffer such a degree of pain as to lose all appetite
and become sickly and emaciated.

If the disease is of a mild form, or be merely in the initiatory stage,
it may be readily cured by cleaning, fomentation, and rest; if it be of
a medium character, between mild and violent, it may be cured by
cleaning, by carefully paring away loose and detached horn, by destroying
any fungus growth, and by applying, with a feather, a little butyr of
antimony; and if it be of a very bad form, or has been long neglected,
it will require to be probed, lanced, or otherwise dealt with according
to the rules of good surgery, and afterwards poulticed twice a day with
linseed meal, and frequently, but lightly, touched with butyr of
antimony.

Founder.

This disease consists in inflammation of the laminae and of the vascular
parts of the sensible foot. It sometimes attacks only one foot,
sometimes two, and sometimes all four; but, in a great majority of
cases, it attacks either one or both of the front feet. A chronic form
sometimes occurs, and exhibits symptoms somewhat similar to those of
contraction of the hoof; but acute inflammation of the laminae is what is
generally called founder.

This disease is occasioned by overstraining of the laminae from long
standing, by prolonged or excessive driving over hard roads, by
congestion from long confinement, by sudden reaction from standing in
snow after being heated, or from covering with warm bedding after
prolonged exposure to cold, by sudden change of diet from a
comparatively cool to a comparatively heating kind of food, and by
translation of inflammatory action from some other part of the body,
particularly after influenza.

In the early stages of founder, a horse evinces great pain, shows
excessive restlessness of foot, and tries to lighten the pressure of his
body on the diseased feet. In the more advanced stages he is feverish,
breathes hard, has violent throbbing in the arteries of the fetlock,
lies down, stretches out his legs, and sometimes gazes wistfully upon
the seat of the disease; and in the ulterior stages, if no efficacious
remedies have been applied, the diseased feet either naturally recover
their healthy condition, or they suppurate, slough, cast part or all of
the hoof, and gradually acquire a small, weak, new hoof, or they