222 INJURIES. 



make an incision through the skin, that our search may 

 extend deeper; but by no means should the tendon be cut. 

 After inflammation has begun, we are not warranted in making 

 a fresh wound : we must foment or poultice, that the foreign 

 substance may be ejected by suppuration. Should this plan 

 not succeed, and the inflammation appear subsiding, apply a 

 blister. In a mare that had undergone all this routine of 

 practice on account of a little eminence in front of the coro- 

 net which had been for many months continually festering 

 and healing up again, I, by way of experiment, at length 

 introduced some powdered arsenic into the orifice of the 

 abscess. This brought on a slough, at once deep and exten- 

 sive, with which escaped a fragment of thorn, that had 

 remained buried during the whole of the previous summer. 

 We must not forget, however, that many instances have 

 occurred of thorns, nails, musket balls, &c., becoming en- 

 cysted, or cased in, and thus continuing for life, without 

 causing lameness. 



On this point Nimrod informs us, "There are few cases of mechanical 

 injury to which hunters are more liable than thorns in their legs, or 

 stubs in their legs and fetlocks. In two instances it has happened to me, 

 that four or five gatherings of pus have been collected and discharged be- 

 fore the thorn would make its appearance, it having been, of course deeply 

 seated. I have the point of a blackthorn, three quarters of an inch long 

 now in my possession, that a hunter of mine carried nearly a whole 

 season in his fetlock- joint, causing suppuration after every day's work." 



" Some years since I sold a mare to an intimate friend for a good 

 round sum. The second season he lamed her ; and after having been 

 severely fired by the late Mr. Walton, V.S., of Shiffnall, she was turned 

 out for the summer. When she came into work again the following 

 autumn a large blackthorn issued from between hair and hoof! She 

 was then sound." 



Major Hall informed me that a mare he hunted, carried 

 a thorn, which for years had been in, at the time he showed 

 the foot to me. 



Even a Divided Tendon need not occasion despair, or 

 cause the horse to be shot as incurable. There is on record 

 a case in which not only the synovial theca was opened, but 

 the tendon severed : a complication of injury which in a man 



