’There was little if any haemorrhage until release of the tourniquet, when the whole broad surface became deluged with blood, three or four small arteries spurting and veins flowing in all directions, so much so that I was glad to reafix the clasp, and with the firing-iron seal up the vessels, searing gently all over the surface.

[Illustration:  FIG. 113.—­CHRONIC CORONITIS FOLLOWING ‘TREAD.’]

’A good dusting with antiseptic powder, a thick pad of carbolized wool, and two long calico bandages wound tightly round, completed the work.

’The other, the near-leg, was then dealt with in the same way.

’The mass removed weighed a little over 9-1/2 pounds—­5 pounds from the off-foot and 4-1/2 pounds from the near.  Its structure was fibrous tissue, almost as firm and hard as cartilage, and with no appearance of malignancy.

’The after-treatment consisted simply of fresh dry dressings—­copper, sulphate, zinc sulphate, and calamine, equal parts—­applied every third or fourth day, after first bathing the feet in a shallow tub of warm antiseptic water.

’At the end of eight or ten weeks a fairly presentable appearance existed.  The greater part of what had been raw surface was covered with healthy skin, and the remainder had become dry and horny.’[A]

[Footnote A:  Veterinary Record, vol. xiv., p. 201 (C.  Cunningham, M.R.C.V.S.).]

A further form of chronic coronitis is that shown in Fig. 113.

This condition is commonly the result of a severe and jagged tread with the calkin, and takes the form of an ulcerous and excessively granulating wound.  As time goes on the granulations become hard and horny-looking, and their fibrous tissue as hard and unyielding as tendon or cartilage.

These if treated in the early stages with repeated dressings of caustic, or, if very exuberant, the use of the knife, usually yield to treatment.  If neglected until the condition depicted in the figure is arrived at, then treatment, as a rule, is of no avail.  Neither is treatment of any use if any great loss of the coronary cushion has occurred.

D. FALSE QUARTER.

Definition.—­False quarter is the term applied to that condition of the horn of the quarter in which, owing to disease or injury of the coronet, the wall is grown in a manner that is incomplete.

Symptoms.—­This condition of the foot appears as a gap or shallow indentation, narrow or wide, in the thickness of the wall, with its length in the direction of the horn fibres.  By this we do not mean that the sensitive laminae are bared and exposed.  Horn of a sort there is, and with this the sensitive structures are covered.  Running down the centre of the incomplete horn is usually a narrow fissure marking the line of separation in the papillary layer of the coronary cushion, which, as we shall later see, is responsible for the malformation.