Chapter XII

. It is sufficient here to state that the condition may be suspected when a hot and painful swelling of the whole coronet makes its appearance. There is at the same time a diffused oedema of the fetlock and the region of the cannon, sometimes extending upwards to the whole of the limb.

Of all the complications to be met with in punctured foot this is the one most to be dreaded. The intense pain and the high fever render the animal weak and thin in the extreme. The appetite becomes impaired, sometimes altogether lost, and the patient in many cases appears to die from sheer exhaustion. Added to this is always the extreme probability of the wound becoming purulent, and later the dread of general septic infection of the blood-stream ensuing, and death resulting from that. Even with the happier ending of resolution, anchylosis of the joint and incurable lameness is more often than not left behind. (See Suppurative or Purulent Arthritis,

##