f improvement by the fifth to seventh day,
it is safe to suspect periostitis, particularly if the coronets are very
hot, the pulse full and hard, and the lameness acute. In the fortunately
rare cases in which the bone is affected with inflammation and
suppuration the agony of the patient is intense; he occupies the
recumbent position almost continually, never standing for more than a
few minutes at a time; suffers from the most careful handling of the
affected feet; maintains a rapid pulse and respiration, high
temperature, loss of appetite, and great thirst. It is in these cases
that the patient continually grows worse, and the appearance of
suppuration at the top of the hoof in about two weeks after the
inception of the disease proves the inefficiency of any treatment which
may have been used and the hopelessness of the case. These patients die
usually between the tenth and twentieth days either from exhaustion or
pyemic infection.

_Gangrene_ occurs in the periosteum as the result of excessive
detachment from the bone and compression due to excessive exudation.
Other parts of the sensitive tissues are subject occasionally to the
same fate, and at times large areas will be found dead.

_Pumiced sole_ is that condition in which the horny sole in the
neighborhood of the toe readily crumbles away and leaves the sensitive
tissues more or less exposed. It is not a complication of laminitis
only, for it is seen under other conditions. Williams has described the
horny tissue of pumiced sole as "weak, cheesy, or spongy, like macerated
horn, or even grumous (thick, clotted)." Crumbling horn, when critically
examined, shows almost an entire absence of the cohesive matter which
unites the healthy fibers, while the fibers themselves are irregular
and granular in appearance. Pumiced sole depends upon an impairment of
the horn-secreting powers of the sensitive sole or upon a separation of
the horny from the soft tissues which maintain its vitality.

Punctured wounds of the foot, accompanied with any considerable
destruction of the soft tissues, present the same peculiarities of horn
in the immediate neighborhood of the injury. Bruises of the sole are
followed by this change when the exudation has been excessive and has
separated the horn from the living tissues. True, in these cases we
rarely see the soft tissues laid bare, for the reason that new horn is
constantly secreted and replaces that undergoing disintegration.

Laminit