366 SETONS. 



SETONS 



Are pieces of tape or cord, passed, by means of an instrument re- 

 sembling a large needle, either through abscesses, or tlio base of 

 ulcers with deep sinuses, or between the skin and the muscular 

 or other substances beneath. They are retained there by the 

 nds being tied together, or by a knot at each end. The tape is 

 moved in the wound twice or thrice in the day, and occasionally 

 wetted with spirit of turpentine, or some acrid fluid, in order to 

 increase the inflammation which it produces, or the discharge 

 which is intended to be established. 



In abscesses, such as occur in the withers or the poll, and when 

 passed from the summit to the very bottom of the swelling, setons 

 are highly useful, by discharging the purulent fluid, (pus or matter), 

 and suffering any fresh quantity of it that may be secreted to 

 flow out ; and, by the degree of inflammation which they excite 

 on the interior of the tumor, stimulating it to throw out healthy 

 granulations which gradually occupy and fill the hollow. In deep 

 fistulous wounds they are indispensable, for except some channel 

 is made through which the matter may flow from the bottom of the 

 wound, it will continue to penetrate deeper into the part, and the 

 healing process will never be accomplished. On these accounts, 

 a seton passed through the base of the ulcer in poll-evil and fis- 

 tulous withers is of so much benefit. 



Setons are sometimes useful by promoting a discharge in the 

 neigiiborhood of an inflamed part, and thus diverting and carry- 

 ing away a portion of the fluids which distend or overload the 

 vessels of that part : thus a seton is placed with considerable ad- 

 vantage in the cheek, when the eyes are much inflamed. We 

 confess, however, that we prefer a rowel under the jaw. 



With this view, and to excite a new and different inflamma- 

 tion in the neighborhood of a part already inflamed, and espe- 

 cially so deeply seated and so difficult to be reached as the navic- 

 ular joint, a seton has occasionally been used with manifest ben- 

 efit, but we must peremptorily object to the indiscriminate use 

 of the frog-seton for almost every disease of the frog or the foot. 



In inflammations of extensive organs, setons afford only feeble 

 aid. Their action is too circumscribed. In inflammation of the 

 chest or the intestines, a rowel is preferable to a seton ; and a 

 blister is far better than any of them. 



be denied that this operation often succeeds when all the other methods of 

 cure have failed. We have little or nothing to add as to the mode of per- 

 forming tiie operation, onl\' that we prefer the lines to be made in the 

 oblique or feather forn:i, simply because it is as effectual as the perpendicu- 

 lar tiring, as regards the bandage, and leaves a lesser blemish as the lineu 

 become covered by the hair growing from above. 



