92 REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 



bleeding, fomentations, poultices, and the administration of a 

 purgative, until the skin is relaxed. " — " Commence the operation 

 by taking up the skin between the finger and thumb of the left 

 hand, and make an orifice with a knife, lancet, or with scissors, 

 sufficiently large to admit the probe-pointed periosteotomy-knife*, 

 which pass under the skin the whole length of the ossifica- 

 tion. Then withdraw it, cutting through the thickened perios- 

 teum, down to the bone." — " If the disease or lameness be of long 

 standing, a small tape or thread seton may be inserted, and kept 

 in a few days." — " The operation is very easily performed, in from 

 one to three minutes; but I consider it necessary only when there 

 exists actual lameness. This, in the majority of cases, is imme- 

 diately removed. A slight inflammation and swelling supervene 

 the next day. The part may be fomented, and moderate exercise 

 given, and generally in about ten days or a fortnight the animal 

 is fit for work. The enlargement considerably subsides, and in 

 some cases becomes quite absorbed." 



Although Mr. Sewell has not mentioned the case of spavin as 

 curable or relievable by periosteotomy, yet it is sufficiently evi- 

 dent that when spavin consists purely in exostosis — as in the 

 form of low spavin or hind splent is the case — it is as suscep- 

 tible of benefit from such an operation as any other exostosis ; 

 and, by way of proof, I may mention I have known lameness 

 arising from spavin of this description removed in this way. 



There can be no possible objection to an operation so simple, 

 so harmless indeed, as periosteotomy ; all that we have to desire 

 is that it were more generally successful than in practice it is 

 found to be. Were the pain, the cause of the lameness, the pro- 

 duct of distention alone of the periosteum, we might place great 

 reliance on periosteotomy ; but, when we know that the callus of 

 the exostosis is a nidus of inflammation, and, consequentl}^ a 

 source of pain in itself, we lose confidence in an operation which 

 effects no more than the relief of the membrane covering the 

 tumour. This constitutes the principal cause — there being other 



* An instrument invented by Mr. Sewell expressly for the performance of 

 the operation. 



