REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. Ill 



Mr. Beeson was the decided advocate of the seton. Con- 

 joined with blisters, he has found it perfectly efficacious. He 

 could safely say, he had not fired for fourteen years. 



The Weight of Evidence of the Veterinarians of the 

 New School, afore-named, preponderates in favour of " giving 

 the fire" for spavin • setons being for the most part regarded either 

 as unadapted to the case, or as remedies inferior in point of efficacy; 

 and blisters being set down lower still in the scale of curative 

 agents. If, then, we take it to be a settled point that it is our duty 

 or best policy to give the fire, the next question we have to ask 

 ourselves — one that likewise fell under discussion in the course of 

 the afore-mentioned debate — is 



To WHAT Depth or Extent the Fire should be given 1 

 From what we can collect from the old authors, some of them 

 appear to have made pretty free use of the iron. Gibson speaks 

 of the wound he made with the cautery being " half-an-inch deep," 

 though but '' an inch in length." I can well remember that my 

 father used his firing-irons with great boldness; and my impres- 

 sion is, that at that day, thirty or forty years ago, such was the 

 general practice of firing. At the time, however, that setons 

 came so much into vogue, at the I/ondon Veterinary College in 

 particular, and after the introduction of periosteotomy by Professor 

 Sewell, firing became much decried as a " cruel" and " unneces- 

 sary" operation, it being alleged that setons were fit and efficient 

 substitutes for it. In these attempts to discard the red-hot iron 

 out of the veterinary surgery — as it had already been cast out of 

 human practice — there was manifest a most praiseworthy spirit of 

 philanthropy, descending from the man upon the brute, and alight- 

 ing upon that brute which we most deservedly hold in especial 

 regard : yet was there one paramount consideration — one insur- 

 mountable objection to turning the cautery out of doors — neither 

 medicine nor instrument was left in our hands which, in certain 

 cases, could supply its place ; and, therefore, had we persisted 

 in relinquishing the use of the hot iron, we must have confessed 

 ourselves unable to work cures in many inveterate and all-but- 

 hopeless cases which, with its aid, we now successfully undertake. 

 But, said another class of veterinarians — among whom, I am not 



