The management and treatment of the horse in the stable, field, and ...

In the Stable, Field, and on the Road. 121
is highly probable that a cure may be effected ; but if
the pipes have a forward direction there is great doubt
of a cure being effected. The treatment I have always
adopted with quittors is to open the hoof in the diseased
part, and allow of free suppuration ; wash clean with
warm soda and water, dress, and inject into the pipes
carbolised oil, strength four oil, one acid ; this requires to
be done three times each day. Carbolic acid, being a
powerful caustic and an antiseptic, has the power of
destroying the ulceration, and its antiseptic properties
prevent suppuration. In most cases of quittor after
carbolic acid has wrought its work in the healing process,
we often find a superfious growth of flesh, and it becomes
necessary to apply nitrate of silver to remove it. This
must be used with great caution, as it is of the utmost
importance in this stage to check the superfluous growth
without retarding the consolidating and healing pro-
cess, and this cannot be done without a knowledge of
the fundamental principles of the foot ; therefore it is of
the utmost importance to call in the aid of the veterinary
surgeon in this disease.
Before leaving the foot of the horse it will be well to
consider how our horses are shod, the kind of shoes that
are used, and the class of men who make them ;
whether
they are the shoes best adapted for the comfort and
profitable working of the various kinds of horses, and if
any improvement is possible to be made, for if a good
system of shoeing is universally adopted we shall have
given the death-blow to nine-tenths of the diseases of the
foot of the horse, and the groom's millennium will have
arrived. It is a generally acknowledged fact that large