Leaving the dietetic and medicinal, we may consider other treatments of laminitis that come more particularly under the heading of operative.

The first matter that here demands our attention is that of allowing the exudate to escape at the sole.  If after the expiration of three or four days pain and other symptoms of distress continue, then it may be judged that the inflammatory exudate has made its appearance.  Operative measures allowing of its escape, though not giving absolute ease, do undoubtedly relieve the more marked expressions of suffering, and should be at once determined on.  To do this completely it is necessary to cast the animal.  The sole is then thinned at the toe with the drawing-knife until the sensitive structures are reached.  A flow of yellow and sometimes blood-stained discharge is immediately obtained, and the sole itself found to be underrun to a considerable extent.  An opening sufficiently large to admit of free drainage (about the size of a half a crown-piece) is made, the wounds antiseptically dressed, and the hobbles removed.

If showing an inclination to do so, the animal should then be allowed to remain and rest.  In one instance in which we so operated (a case of laminitis in the hind-feet alone), the relief given was at once manifested.  For three days previously the animal had remained standing in agonizing pain.  On the fourth he was cast, and the discharge—­partly inflammatory exudate, and partly a sanious foetid pus—­liberated.  The hobbles were removed, and the animal allowed to remain down while our attention was drawn to another case.  This attended to, we walked back to the field where, our first patient was lying.  His breathing, but a short time before distressedly short and catching, was now so slow and deeply regular that for one brief moment the thought flashed across our mind that he was dead.  He was in a profound sleep.

Other operators sometimes give the exudate escape while making the grooves in what is now known as ‘Smith’s Operation.’

In this operation the hoof is so grooved as to allow of its expansion, so relieving the pressure on the sensitive structures within it.  Incidentally, the inflammatory exudate is given exit.

[Illustration:  FIG. 120.—­DIAGRAM OF HOOF SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE THREE GROOVES MADE IN THE TREATMENT OF LAMINITIS.]

The animal is cast, the shoes removed, and three vertical grooves made in the wall.  The first is cut down the centre of toe, extending from the coronet to the ground surface.  The second is made to the right of this, and the third to the left, each following the direction of the horn fibres, and each distant about 2 inches from the first (see 1, 2, and 3, Fig. 120).

Each of the grooves must run completely from the coronary margin to the ground surface, and each should be carried through the substance of the horn until the horny laminae are reached.  This done, the underneath surface of the foot is grooved at the white line (see curved groove 4, Fig. 121) in such a manner as to entirely isolate the two pieces of horn a and b from the remainder of the hoof.