ENLARGEMENT OF THE LACllKYMAE CARUNCLE. 149 



which all the pains we may have taken in the appUcation of the 

 sutures may turn out to be completely frustrated — is the precau- 

 tions to be taken to prevent the patient from disturbing, fretting, 

 or dissevering the wounded parts again, by rubbing his eye against 

 some part of the stall, rack, or manger : an act he is almost certain 

 to commit, urged to it by the irritation and annoyance the sutures 

 are likely to occasion him. The surest plan of procedure is to 

 confine his head with a double rope, running through or attached 

 to rings affixed to the posts of the stall- boards, on either side, so far 

 back that he cannot reach either rack or manger with his head, or 

 make any attempt to lie down. In this pillared position — fed out of 

 a hay-basket or box placed, at feeding-times only, before him — he is 

 to be kept until the eyelid is quite adhered and cicatrized. Even 

 after this, on being liberated, I have had horses that have, vexa- 

 tiously, rubbed and excoriated or severed afresh the healed-up parts. 

 One patient served me this trick three times, and in the end forced 

 me to deprive hirn of a portion of his upper eyelid ; thereby render- 

 ing his eye continually tantalized by light, producing frequent nic- 

 titation, and occasional lachrymation, and in time likely to bring 

 on internal disease. 



ENLARGEMENT OF THE LACHRYMAL CARUNCLE. 



Major B— , of the Guards, brought his charger to me for " a 

 swelling at the inner side of the eye." I found it to be — what I 

 had never seen before — an enlargement of the lachrymal caruncle. 

 It was about the magnitude of a large pea. My advice to the 

 Major was, that he had better let it alone : it neither interfered 

 with vision, nor with the course of the jtears ; and any attempt to 

 remove it might do harm, by proving an excitant of inflammation in 

 the eye, or might be followed by " a watery eye." The horse, 

 in accordance with this advice, was taken away ; but at the end 

 of five or six months, returned to me with the caruncle as large as 

 a marble, and certainly, from its redness as well, appearing now 

 to amount to a very objectionable appendage : still, nowise molest- 

 ing vision or the entrance of the tears into the puncta. How- 

 over, the Major had made up his mind that the preternatural 



