FALSE QUARTER, OR A DEFICIENCY OF
THE OUTER WALL.
THE ONLY POSSIBLE RELIEF FOR FALSE
QUARTER.
No art can cure a false quarter; a portion of the coronary substance has been lost, and no medicine can restore it. All that can be done is to mitigate the suffering; a bar shoe with a clip at the toe may be used, the bearing being taken off at the seat of false quarter. The portion of crust near to the weakened part should be beveled off, so as to join the soft horn with an insensible edge. Some persons recommend a mixture of pitch, tar, and rosin to be poured over the exposed quarter; the author has not found this compound to answer; it peels and breaks off upon the horse being put in motion. A piece of gutta-percha, of proportionate thickness, fastened over the place, has sometimes remained on for a week, and answered to admiration.
SEEDY TOE.
It appears not to have occurred to writers upon veterinary subjects that the horse, which breathes but to work—for the instant its ability to toil ceases the knacker becomes its possessor—that an animal which exists under so severe a law, should occasionally be "used up;" that a creature which is sold from master to master, all of whom become purchasers with a view only to "the work" each can get out of the "thews and muscles," should occasionally be debilitated to that stage which might interfere with the healthiness of its secretions, is a notion that seems to have been beyond the reach of those writers who have hitherto composed books upon the equine race. A separation between the union of the two layers of horn which compose the crust has been long known; it has been much thought about, and the fancy has been somewhat racked to account for its origin. Still, although the human physician has recorded the brittle state and abnormal condition of man's nails in peculiar stages of disease, no one seems thence to have argued that a certain condition of body might possibly affect the hoofs of our stabled servant.
SECTION OF A HORSE'S FOOT
AFFECTED WITH SEEDY TOE.
The method of cure which the author adopted, led thereto by the admirable lectures of Mr. Spooner, and the success it met, soon made apparent the fact of its origin; but, before describing this, it may be as well to inform the reader in what consists a seedy state of the horse's toe.
The wall of the foot is composed of two layers—the outer one, the hardest, the darkest, and the thinnest, is secreted by the coronet; the inner layer, the softest, thickest, and most light in color, is derived from the sensitive laminæ. These different kinds of horn, in a healthy state, unite one with the other, so that the two apparently form one substance. The junction makes a thick, elastic, and strong body, whereto an iron shoe can be safely nailed, and whereon the enormous bulk of the horse's frame may with safety rest.