DISEASES OF TIIE EYE. It is impossible to over estimate the value of sound eyes in a horse, for not only does disease or injury depreciate the selling price of the animal, hut it is a great source of danger at n11 times. Some diseases, like recurring inflammation or !noon-blindness, as it is called. are congenital. The strneture of the eve is that of a spheroidal body, flattened behind. The posterior four-fifths is inclosed by an opaque, strong, fibrous membrane. which has on its inner side a more delicate membrane consisting prin. eipally of blood-vessels and pigment-cells, which in its turn is lined by the extremely delicate and sensitive expansion of the retina. The anterior fitth of the globe of the eye bulges forward from what would have been the direct line of the sclerotic, forming a segmient of a much smaller sphere than is inclosed by the sclerotic. There are four straight muscles of the eye, and two oblique and one retractor, enabling the eye to turn inward, outward, upward. and downward, and when all act together the eyeball is drawn deeply into its socket. One of the most common diseases is inflammation of the eyelids, which is caused usually by exposure. bites, or stings of insects. pricks with thorns, or by a whip or club. or as a result of infecting inoculations. All the known Causes may ordinarily be divided tinder the folho•ing heads: (a) Inflammations due to constitutional causes; (b) those due to direct injury, mechanical or chemical: and (e) those due to inoculation with infecting mate rial. The local treatments ordinarily advised con sist of astringent. soothing lotions (sugar of lead, 30 grains; laudanum, 2 teaspoonfuls; rain-water —boiled and cooled—one pint) applied with a soft cloth kept wet with the lotion and hung over the eye by tying it to the headstall of (lie bridle On t Ile two sides. The horse should be fed from a high manger. so as to help the return of the blood from the head; and his diet should be laxa tive and non-stimulating. For a stye or boil of the eyelid. the practice is to apply poultiee of camomile flowers. with the addition of a few drop, of enrholie acid. The 'multi., should he applied in a very thin muslin bag. Wound, such as torn eyelids. caused by the horn, of rattle, perhaps by teeth, or by nail:, or the barbs I if wire fences, are also frequent. In such e:1,014 the edges should be brought together as promptly as possi ble. so as to secure union without any unsightly It is all operation that requires ex• peri•nte and skill.
LastExEss. By this is meant any irregularities or of the funetions of locomotion. There are innumerable forms of lameness, the source; of many of which are El' so obscure defy location until the resulting disease has gained sufficient headway to be serious. In veterinary nomenclature each two of the legs, as referred to in pairs, are denominated a biped, the two fore legs being the anterior biped, and the two hinder the posterior: the two on one side are designated the lateral; and either the front or the hind biped, with the opposite leg of the hind or the front biped, forms the diagonal biped. In health, end ]! biped as well as cavil individual leg has to perform an equal and uni form duty anti carry an equnl share of the total weight of the body. so that the result ought to be a regular. evenly balanced, and smooth dis placement of the body. A•eording to the rapidity of the motion of the animal in different. gaits, each single leg is required at moments to bear the weight which had the moment before rested on its congener: or again the legs of one biped may be required to carry the weight of its op posite biped. Beginning- with diseases of the bones as a common source of lameness, the 'splint' (q.v.) will be found to be of the common est oeeurrence. Indeed, a horse which does not possess one or more belongs to a very small minority. The splint is a bony enlargement on the cannon-hone, hetween the knee or hock and the fetlock joint. kinghoneR (q.v.) usually re sult from heavy labor before the animal was of sufficient age, and consequently before the bones were sufficiently ossified: or else from bruises., sprains. or other form: of violence. ( TV.) , or of the hock-joint, is a disease of the most serious kind for many reasons, not the least of which is the slowness of its develop ment and the insidiousness of it growth. Frac tures are of less serious •on-equenee in the horse than in man, but nevertheless they are always a matter of grave import and demand at once a moat skillful treatment. Wind-galls (q.v.) is a name given to the dilated bursa- found at the pos terior part of the fetlock joint. ,Sprains are dis eases of the muscles and tendon:. Ordinarily the cause of a sprain may be attributed to a fall or overstrain, and subsequent soreness, swelling, and suspension of functions. Rest is the prime es sential, the treatment consisting of local ap plications, stimulating counter-irrita tion, and occasionally firing. Lameness of the shoulder from sprain is the most frequent. and is popularly described as slip of the shoulder. With draught-horses it frequently is caused by the effort necessary to move off a heavily loaded vehiela. In the great majority of eases a rest is all that is necessary to effect a cure. Under the general elassifiention of diseases of the fetlock, ankle, and foot are to lie found many of the most common as well as most fatal (so far as the value of the animal is concerned) diseases known to veterinary science. Many horses are predisposed to injuries and diseases because of imperfectly formed feet, in consequence of which they are peculiarly liable to diseases of this character. Flat-footed horses are liable to corns, pumieed sole, bruises of the sole, and kindred troubles, owing to the fact that the soles of their feet have little, if any, convexity. The flat foot has no arch, so that the weight of the animal falls on the entire plantar surface instead of on the wall, which allows of little, if any, elasticity in the sole. In clubfoot the feet have the wall set nearly perpendicular, and consequently the heels stand high and the fetlock joint is either thrown for ward or knuckled, and the weight of the animal is thrown onto the toes. In crooked foot one side of the wall is higher than the other, causing the animal to be pigeon-toed as well as making it `interfere.' Interfering is when one foot in action strikes the opposite leg. Knuckling is an other fault, which causes stumbling, and while not always an unsoundness in itself, yet frequently leads to fracture of the pastern. It is a partial dislocation of the fetlock joint, and is caused more often by heavy work in hilly districts or fast work on race-tracks or hard roads than any thing else. The principal remedy for all faults of conformation will be found in suitable horse shoeing: which subject is discussed at some length under HORSESIMEING. 'prains of the fetlock are the consequence of knuckling or any diseases which interfere with proper locomotion, such as. navicular disease, chronic laminitis, contracted heels, side bones ; or such external causes as a rut or hole in the road. or any acci dent which causes the animal to fall. For slight injuries cold-water bandages and a few days' rest will be found sufficient. Should theta be severe
lameness or much swelling, a stream of cold water playing upon the leg will be found very beneficial. On the subsidence of the inflammation a blister should be applied to the joint. When the shoe of the hind foot strikes the heel or quarter of the fore foot the animal is said to overreach, a trouble common to trotting and running horses. When the hind foot catches well back on the heel of the fore foot the horse will frequently he thrown on his knees or the shoe torn from the fore foot. an accident known collo quially as grabbing. The art of the shoeing smith is demanded. if future injuries are to he avoided. Wounds should be dressed with tincture of aloes, oakum, and a roller bandage; and in any ease the animal should never be driven at a very fast gait unless his heels and quarters are protected with quarter-boots. Heavy or draught horses are liable to calk wounds, caused from tramping either on themselves or each other. Good shoe ing and the use' of hoots will he found the best remedy. Quit tors (q.v.) have been authoritative ly divided into four classes: (a) Cutaneous quit tor: (b) tendinous quittor: (e) subliorny quit tor ; and (d) cartilaginous quittor. Thrush (q.v.) is more common with draught-horses than any other breed, and is usually caused by a filthy, ill-kept stable. Corns are injuries to the living horn of the foot. appearing in that part of the sole which is included in the angle between the bar and the outside wall of the hoof. They are described, according to the character of the con ditions which follow the primary injury, as the dry, the moist, and the suppurative. The dis ease is confined almost exclusively to the fore feet, because of the greater weight which they support, and because the heel of the fore foot in action first strikes the ground and thus receives much more shock or concussion than the heel of the hind foot, in which the toe first makes contact with the ground. Faulty shoeing is the great predisposing cause, or else the presence of small stones or other objects between the sole and shoe. Lameness caused by bruises of the frog is best treated by putting the foot at once in a bath of cold water in order to prevent suppuration, which will frequently be effective if the disease is caught at the beginning. If suppuration. how ever, has already commenced, the horn of the frog and of the bars and branches of the sole, if neces sary, is to be pared thin in order that the foot may be poulticed and all pressure removed. When the lameness has subsided and the exposed part covered by a new layer of horn, the foot may be shod. Punctured wounds of the foot are of every day occurrence, and when they, as frequently happens, involve the more important organs con tained in the hoof, no disease or wound can be more serious. Most frequently a 'picked-up' nail is the cause of trouble, and again the wounds may happen from sharp pieces of rock, glass, wire, etc. The nearer the injury is to the centre of the foot the more possibilities there are of dis astrous results. Punctured wounds of the an terior parts of the sole are the more dangerous because of the possibility of injury to the coffin bone, the most serious wounds being those which puncture the centre of the foot. Sometimes it happens that a nail has penetrated the frog and remained there for several days without causing lameness, the first evidence of an injury betraying itself when the foot is being cleaned. It must be remembered that if the injury is not too deep, suppuration will be established before lameness develops, so that the feet should always be most closely scrutinized. Should the eoffin-joint have been penetrated either by the external cause or by the process of suppuration. an acute inflamma tion of the joint will follow, which will he in variably accompanied by high fever as well as less of appetite. The treatment recommended in all eases of punctured wound; is the thinning down of the horn near the seat of injury, a free opening created for the escape of suppurated mat ter, and the foot itself placed in a poultice. Where the injury is not serious, recovery in a few days' time is ordinarily assured: but where serious injuries have been inflicted. the foot should he treated to a cold bath or the stream of cold water described in the treatment for quittor (q.v.). Contracted heels, or, as it is more frequently called, hoof-bound, is common among saddie-horses and those kept on hard floors in dry stables. Ordinarily, but one foot is affected at a time, and it affects the fore feet principally. The disease itself is an atrophy or shrinking of the tissues of the foot, which diminishes in par ticular the diameter of the heels. Another very prevalent cause is faulty shoeing. although it sometimes happens that it results from other dis eases of the foot. as, for instance. thrush• side bones, corns. etc. The disease is indicated by a pinched and shrunken frog, high heels. long hare, straight walls. and hoof so dry that it is almost impossible to cut it. The treatment consists first of all of preventive measures. The feet are kept moist and the horn is prevented from drying out by the use of moist sawdust, occasional poul tices of boiled tut and a tree use of greasy hoof ointments to the sole and walls of the feet. Careful shoeing, how c‘er, will be found to be one half of the eure. Nundl-eroeks may happen on any part of the wall, although usually they ap pear directly in front and are called toe-cracks, or on the lateral parts of the walls, and are known ;is (q.v.). The latter usu ally affect the fore feet_ and the former the libel feet. .\ samberack. which 11 is a solution of con tinuity or tissure in the horn of the wall of the foot, nay he supertieinl. involving only the outer parts of the wall, or it may be deep, involving the whole thiekness of the wall as well as the soft tissues beneath. The disease is most serious when it involves the coronary band: and may he further complicated by hemorrhage, inflammation of the suppuration, and gangrene. The predisposing cause of sand-cracks is the relative dryness of the horn. although excessive dryness is not more dangerous than alternate changes from damp to dry. ()Hier predisposing causes are heavy shoes. large nails, and bad shoeing in gen eral, tiewther with such diseases as canker, quit tor, and suppurative corns. Very little can be done in thy way of prevention. but the suppleness of the horn may be maintained by the use of oint ments. damp floor. bedding. etc.. as well as by proper shoeing. After the fissure has made its appearance, all efforts should be directed to pre tent its growing longer and deeper, the usual method being to arrest all motion in the edges. A very simple appliance for holding the borders of a toy-erack together is the vachette clasp. They are made of still' steel wire and are strong enough to prevent all motion in the borders of the eruct:. Where these instruments can not. obtained a good substitute is to drill a hole th rought the horn across the fissure. and close the crack by means of a thin nail made of tough iron and neatly clinched at each end.