84 TREATMENT OF SPAVIN. 



can reach them, so as to make a perfect cure." — ^' A charge, or caus- 

 tick ointment, with sublimate or arsenic^ the most likely to succeed 

 in this case." — " I have known some hold ignorant fellows' SMCceed 

 ill such cases." — " The same thing has happened by firing deep 

 into the spavin." — "A true spavin in an old horse proves no less 

 difficult ; and in such cases, firing all round the hock, and after- 

 wards turning them out to grass, is the most likely to succeed, so 

 far at least as to fit them for some sort of business ; though the 

 stiffness of the hock will be but little abated, even if the spavin be 

 removed, stiffness on bending of the joints being an infirmity to 

 which all old horses are more or less subject, even where there is 

 no manifest malady or disease*." 



I have made my extracts from Gibson so full and lengthy, that 

 my readers might see how much, a century ago, had been accom- 

 plished in the way of treatment of spavin ; and now that they 

 have perused this excellent account, T can entertain no doubt of 

 the professional part of them, at least, being of opinion with me, 

 that the veterinarians of the present day have little to boast of in 

 the way of innovation or discovery in this department of veteri- 

 nary therapeutics. 



What did Coleman say on the subject? He took 

 an anatomico-philological view of it, and said, " neither spavin nor 

 splent was ever cured." By this he meant, that the fibro- cartila- 

 ginous tissue, which was converted by these diseases into osseous 

 substance, was never re-converted into its original soft elastic na- 

 ture, but for ever remained bone. Nevertheless, Coleman blistered 

 and fired, the same as veterinary practitioners of the present day 

 are in the habit of doing:. 



The important subject of the treatment of spavin conveniently 

 resolves itself, for our consideration, into two divisions; — into the 

 curability of the disease, and the remedial agents most proper or 

 likely to work a cure. 



* A new Treatise on the Diseases of Horses. By Wm. Gibson, Surgeon, 

 1754, 2d edit. 



