542 OPERATIONS ON THE NEEVOUS SYSTEM. 



long series of trials, and as the result of much discussion of its 

 merit and value, that it secured an affirmative verdict from the 

 magnates of veterinary practice, and became an estabUshed posi- 

 tion in our science. Yet the objections which it encountered in 

 Europe have not to this day been wholly eradicated, and on this 

 side of the Atlantic there are few practitioners who still decHne 

 to give it their confidence and adopt it in their practice. The 

 opposition which it has encountered is founded principally upon 

 the failures, the accidents and the unfortunate sequelae, which 

 were not rarely met with during the period immediately following 

 its original introduction. These objections we now proceed to 

 consider. 



Stumbling has been mentioned as one of the first e£fects of 

 the loss of the tactile function of the foot, by the destruction of 

 its sensibility. The animal which has lost the sohdity and the 

 certainty of his gait, will only after a long time become accus- 

 tomed to the proper use of the comparatively inert mass repre- 

 sented by so indispensable a part of his organization as his foot, 

 so complicated in its arrangements and adaptations, and so per- 

 fect a portion of his anatomical structure before the extirpation 

 of its nervous sense. And yet, while this condition of stumb- 

 ling must be fvilly appreciated by those whose anatomical knowl- 

 edge enables them to take into full and careful consideration 

 the physiology of the part, and who have verified the objection 

 from their own observation, there are also veterinarians of large 

 practice and long experience who have operated in numerous 

 cases, even upon animals used for fast work, where the muscular 

 effort is of a comparatively violent character, who have met with 

 the accident only in very rare and strictly exceptional cases. It 

 must rationally be inferred that an unskilled operation of such a 

 character would leave the patient in a condition of which an awk- 

 ward and stumbhng gait would be but a natural and inevitable 

 sign. But it would also be in the course of a natural and healthy 

 reaction for a horse to educate himself rapidly to the situation, 

 and acquire a new certainty of movement and confidence in the 

 use of his feet, which would soon restore him to his former abil- 

 ity to labor. 



The casting off of the hoof, as a compUcation or termination 

 of the operation in neurotomized horses, is one necessarily of a 

 fatal character. This fataUty has, in some instances, followed the 



