SPAVIN SHOULDER-JOINT LAMENESS. 305 



the day should not induce him to decry a plan which has for so 

 many years been proved to be successful. In human surgery the 

 same course has been adopted, and for the last thirty or forty 

 years the actual cautery has been voted " barbarous" in this 

 country. Now, however, a counter current is setting in, and it is 

 the general opinion of the first hospital surgeons of the day that, 

 in certain diseases of the joints^ no remedy is nearly so efficacious. 

 All sorts of attempts are made to render the use of the hot iron 

 less repugnant to the senses; but in the case of the horse it is only 

 necessary to measure its comparative utility and the amount of 

 pain which it gives. The former has been already considered, and 

 as to the latter, if the irons are properly heated, I much doubt 

 whether their action is not less painful than that of any other 

 counter-irritant. Setons, perhaps, give less pain if skilfully in- 

 serted, and they are admirable remedies, having nearly the same 

 beneficial effects as firing, and leaving a far slighter blemish. They 

 should be passed beneath a considerable track of the skin, covering 

 the " spavin place," and the tape requires to be smeared with blis- 

 tering cerate to produce sufficient irritation. Their use by them- 

 selves is often sufficient, but when preceded by subcutaneous 

 scarification they seem to act even more certainly than firing. 



The method of operation is similar to that described for splints, 

 but it requires more knowledge of the anatomy of the parts to 

 avoid doing mischief by cutting into one of the joints. There is 

 always afterwards considerable effusion into the subcutaneous 

 cellular membrane, demanding two or three months for its removal ; 

 but as the spavined horse requires that interval of rest, this is of 

 little or no consequence. When the disease has gone so far that 

 no method of treatment will remove it, the nerve above the hock 

 may be divided, which will enable the horse to work without pain 

 for a time, but the disease goes on the faster, and the benefit 

 derived is only temporary. 



EXOSTOSIS OF THE HUMERUS AND SCAPULA.* 



THE HEADS OF THE BONES adjacent to most of the joints of the 

 body are more or less subject to exostosis, though not so frequently 

 as those of the pastern bones and tarsus. Next to these probably 

 comes the shoulder joint, the neighborhood of which is often the seat 

 of this disease. The left scapula and humerus of a horse are often 

 completely anchylosed, and of course there co-exists a proportionate 



* Shoulder -joint lameness, as it is generally called, is much more frequent 

 than formerly, generally resulting in ulceration of the bone. It is readily 

 seen by standing before the horse, and is at once detected by holding up the 

 sound member from the ground and forcing the animal to stand upon the 

 lame one. This is a more serious affection than simple sprain of the mus- 

 cles of the shoulder. EDITOR. 



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