[Illustration:  Fig. 34—­Showing the effects of laminitis.  By permission, from Merillat’s “Veterinary Surgical Operations.”]

Treatment.—­Much depends upon the concomitant disturbances (or causes if one is justified in referring to them as such) as to the manner in which laminitis is to be treated.  In all cases where digestive disturbances exist, the prompt unloading of the contents of the alimentary canal is certainly indicated.  D.M.  Campbell[31] in a discussion of laminitis has the following to say regarding the treatment of such cases: 

Because superpurgation may be followed by laminitis, the advisability of using the active hypodermic cathartics is questioned.  Neither arecolin nor eserin can cause superpurgation.  The action of the former does not continue longer than an hour after administration and of the latter not more than eight hours.  The action of either is mild after the first few minutes.

I do not think that anyone has recommended either arecolin or eserin where there is severe purgation.  Where the intestinal canal is fairly well emptied and its contents fluid, I should be inclined to rely upon intestinal antiseptics to hold in check harmful bacterial growth.

The use of alum in the treatment of laminitis is held to be without reason other than the empirical one that it is beneficial.  If laminitis is due chiefly to an autointoxication, good and sufficient reason for the administration of alum can be shown based upon its known physiological action.  It is the most powerful intestinal astringent that I know of and has the fewest disadvantages.  I have not noted constipation following its use nor diarrhea, nor a stopping of peristalsis, nor indigestion, and in any case its action lasts at most only a few hours, and if it did all these, it could not much matter.  Quitman says, that it constricts the capillaries.  If this is true, a thing of which I am not certain, is it not reasonable to suppose that as with other vaso-constrictors, e.g., digitalis, there is a selective action on the part of the capillaries (not of the drug) and those that need it most, i.e., those of the affected feet in laminitis, are constricted most?  All body cells exert this selective action in the assimilation of food, the tissue needing most any particular kind of food circulating in the blood, gets it.

Our first consideration in laminitis should be to remove the cause—­to stop the absorption of the toxin in the intestinal tract that is producing the condition.  This we accomplish by partially unloading it by the use of the active hypodermic cathartics and stopping absorption by the surest and most harmless of intestinal astringents.  Whether the astonishingly prompt and certain action of alum in this case is due wholly to its astringent action or whether alum combines with the harmful bacterial products chemically and forms an innocuous combination, I can only