REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 107 



In the foregoing extracts several observations strike us 

 forcibly for their accuracy and truth, and their applicability, and 

 even the use that is constantly made of them, at the present time. 

 One is, the admonition to make trial of mild or simple means of 

 cure before we call into our aid so harsh a measure as firing. 



Blundeville's caution is, " not to be too hasty in giving the 

 fire," but " to attempt, first, all other convenient remedies ; and, 

 when nothing will help, to make the fire our last refuge." Hu- 

 manity would prompt us in every case to do so ; but I fear that 

 in too many cases we should discover, when it was late, that it had 

 proved bad medical policy to have so acted. I must confess, there 

 was a time when I should always have given a preference — a trial, 

 at least — to simple and comparatively painless remedies, before I 

 had recourse to firing; believing in Hippocrates' aphorism, that, 

 " Quos cunque morbos medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat ; 

 quos ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat ; quos vero ignis non sanat, in- 

 sanabiles existimare oportet." The new lights, however, of late 

 years thrown upon the pathology of spavin, together with the ob- 

 servation of the frequent recurrence of lameness after horses have 

 been sent away " cured" of spavin by such mild means, have 

 wrought, in this respect, an entire change in my practice. View- 

 ing the case as one of articular spavin — of disease within as well 

 a^ disease without the hock joint — after having prescribed topical 

 blood-letting and fomentation, and physic, and low diet, and rest, 

 even though it should turn out that the case has received so much 

 benefit thereby as to be restored to soundness, my advice still is, 

 the firing-iron had better be " run over" the hock to make perma- 

 nent that which rest, and remedies so simple, have accomplished. 

 Perhaps it will be asked here — Why not blister or seton the hock] 

 My reply is, because neither blister nor seton is likely — has by 

 experience been found — to confer that lasting benefit which the 

 actual cautery has been proved to afford. This, however, is too 

 weighty a question to be disposed of by naked assertion : it will 

 have to be considered hereafter. 



Another pointed observation of the ancients, and one we have 

 never lost sight of, it having been handed down to us from genera- 

 tion to generation, is the bracing and strengthening power of fir- 



