Although with care suppurating corn, like other cases of suppuration within the hoof, may yield to treatment, the owner of the animal should, nevertheless, be warned that the condition is a serious one, especially should the joint become affected.  It may so happen, as sometimes in fact it does, that the animal may die as a result of the infective fever so set up.  From no surface in the body can absorption take place quicker than from the synovial membrane of a joint.  So soon, therefore, as this membrane comes in contact with septic material, so soon does a severe septic fever make its appearance.  The septic matter has gained the blood-stream, and the patient succumbs to septic poisoning.

Apart from death occurring naturally, the changes taking place in the joint in the shape of bony growths or of actual anchylosis may be so severe as to render the animal useless, and slaughter may have to be advised.

Treatment.—­We have already said that by far the most active cause in the production of corn is the shoe.  It follows from this that it is to the shoeing we must largely look for a successful means of their prevention, and that the treatment of corn in its most simple form is really a matter for the smith, and not for the veterinary surgeon.

The faults in connection with the shoeing we have mentioned fully when treating of the causes of corn.  From those we learn that a shoe with a flat-bearing surface, or one moderately seated but flat at the heels, is the correct shoe for nearly all feet.  The heels of the shoe should not be too high, should not be too short, and should be wide enough apart from each other to insure the wall of the foot obtaining a fair share of the bearing.  Finally, even with the present method of shoeing, whenever it is possible to allow the frog to come to the ground, it should be encouraged to do so, and excessive paring either of the latter organ or of the bars or the sole should be strictly discountenanced.  Where the sole is thin, or the frog wasted, use a leather sole or a rubber pad.  With these precautions, corns may be prevented from occuring even in a foot with a predisposing conformation.

When corn is present, the first treatment usually adopted is that of ‘paring it out.’  This is advocated by Percival and by many other writers.  We cannot say, however, that we agree with it—­at any rate, not in the case of simple dry corn.

‘Paring it out,’ and by that we mean thinning down the sole until close on the sensitive structures, can only be advised in the case of suppurating corn, or in cases where doubt exists as to whether pus is present or not.  In the latter case paring becomes necessary as an exploratory means to diagnosis.

When it appears fairly certain, even in the case of a moist corn, that pus does not exist, then paring is to be discountenanced, for the reason that it only tends to weakening of the parts and to assist largely in the corn’s recurrence.