REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 99 



leg," the cause of which was not apparent. Blood was drawn 

 from the saphena vein, a high-heeled shoe put on, fomentations 

 used to the hock, and a strong dose of physic given. 



Jan. 10/A, 1840. — Three weeks afterwards the horse was dis- 

 charged for duty, " sound." 



Mih. — Returned to the infirmary stables on account of relapse 

 of lameness in the same limb, the cause now being, evidently 

 enough, spavin. Local blood-letting, fomentation, &c. were again 

 practised, but this time without affording any relief. 



29^/i. — The hock was blistered. After a month's rest, the 

 blister in the interval having worked off, there was still no 

 amendment. 



March 2d. — The hock fired. Failing to derive benefit from 

 which, he was, ultimately, cast and sold. 



These cases shew us that good may be expected from blood- 

 letting practised earli/ in a case of spavin, but not afterwards, and 

 thus afford additional evidence of the desirableness of submitting 

 spavined horses at once to treatment. Veterinary practitioners, 

 who have few or no opportunities of treating spavin in its inchoate 

 stage, have, perhaps, little notion of how much may be effected 

 in the way of cure by blood-letting, the horse being the while 

 kept at rest. It might, indeed, be argued that the rest does the 

 good. Be this the case or not, all I can say is, that, aided by 

 strict quietude, T have found venesection of essential service in the 

 incipient forms of spavin lameness. At the same time I am fully 

 of opinion that any amendment we may have obtained by such 

 means is rendered permanent — when perhaps it would prove but 

 temporary — by following up the blood-letting by counter-irritation. 

 I would not counsel any person, whose spavined horse has been 

 relieved or cured by such means as local blood-letting, and physic, 

 and rest, to put that horse to work again until he had undergone 

 a pretty severe course of counter-irritative treatment — in the form 

 of blistering, or firing, or setoning, &c., as the case may seem to 

 require. 



Although recent cases of spavin are in general relievable, if 

 not curable, by blood-letting and rest, experience has taught that 

 others, in advanced stages of the disease, and which unfortunately 



