Читать книгу Special Report on Diseases of the Horse - Charles B. Michener - Страница 39

Lampas is the name given to a swelling of the mucous membrane covering the hard palate and projecting in a more or less prominent ridge immediately behind the upper incisors. The hard palate is composed of spongy tissue that fills with blood when the horse is feeding, which causes the ridges to become prominent, and they then help to keep feed from dropping from the mouth. This swelling is entirely natural and occurs in every healthy horse. Where there is some irritation in the mouth, as in stomatitis or during teething, the prominence of the hard palate may persist, owing to the increased blood supply. In such cases the cause of the irritation should be nought for and removed. By way of direct treatment, slight scarification is the most that will be required. Burning the lampas is barbarous and injurious, and it should never be tolerated.

It is a quite common opinion among owners of horses and stablemen that lampas is a disease that very frequently exists. In fact whenever a horse fails to eat, and if he does not exhibit very marked symptoms of a severe illness, they say at once "he has the lampas." It is almost impossible to convince them to the contrary; yet it is not the case. It may be put down, then, as an affliction of the stable-man's imagination rather than of the horse's mouth.