216 EVERY MAN HIS OWN FARRIER 



feet ; and if the weather is at all cold, let it stand in 

 the house over night. 



If the disease is seated exactly in that part where the 

 divisions of the skull meet, and consequently in a right 

 line with the top of the nose, he must probe both nos- 

 trils ; when, should he miss the bulb on one side, he 

 will be sure to hit it on the other. If the seat of the 

 disease cannot at all be found, and if the animal have 

 all the symptoms of the malady, the water is then in- 

 closed among the ventricles in the middle of the brain, 

 and must be treated as above. Nothing can be done 

 in the last case, save with the wire ; but it is hard to 

 cure them when so affected. I have found, on dissec- 

 tion, the fluid contained in many little cells in the 

 centre of the brain ; and though the wire had pene- 

 trated some of those cells, it had missed others. 



By this simple operation alone, I have cured hun- 

 dreds; and though I never kept an exact register, I 

 think I have not known it to fail above once in four 

 times at an average, in all the instances which have 

 come under my observation; and some of these I knew 

 to be injudiciously performed, the disease not being 

 seated in a point which the wire could reach. I have 

 at times cured a dozen, and ten in regular succession, 

 without failing once, and I have again, in some cold 

 seasons of the year, killed three or four successively. 



Sir George M'Kenzie has insinuated, in his book on 

 sheep, that I was the inventor of this mode of cure — 

 but it is by no means the case. 



The practice, I understand, has been in use among 

 shepherds for ages past; but they were often obliged 

 to perform it privately ; their masters, like the pro- 

 fessors about Edinburgh; always arguing, that the 

 piercing of the brain must necessarily prove fatal. 

 Sir George has, however, misunderstood my account 



