112 REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 



ashamed to confess, I, in former days, stood myself — " cannot we 

 effect all we desire or require by 



Superficial Firing 1" by which is generally meant, firing that 

 does not penetrate the skin — the cutis vera. It was thought that — 

 for the sake of the sufferer — this sort of compromise might be made. 

 Those veterinarians, however, whose practice lay the most in hunt- 

 ing and racing counties, and who had not only spavins and curbs 

 to contend with, but had awful cases of what is called " broken 

 down" to mend or restore, found from experience that, with them, 

 nothing would suffice short of the deep cautery lesion ; and the 

 first person to remind such practitioners as might have been led 

 astray by the practice of setoning, &c., or the error of supposing 

 that deep firing could be dispensed with, was Mr. James Turner. 

 So long ago as the year 1830, " An INQUIRY INTO THE CIRCUM- 

 STANCES WHICH HAVE BROUGHT INTO DISREPUTE THE OPERA- 

 TION OF FIRING FOR LAMENESSES OF HORSES, WITH AN IM- 

 PROVED METHOD, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ITS ADMISSION INTO 

 HUMAN SURGERY," was sent by Mr. Turner to The Lancet, and 

 from that journal copied into THE VETERINARIAN. In this " in- 

 quiry," after stating that " experience gained by a long practice in 

 a hunting country notorious for its hills and flints incapacitating 

 the legs of horses" — *' his desire is to ' see the phoenix rise from 

 its dying ashes' " — which I interpret to be, the restoration of the 

 old or deep method of firing — he informs us, his " practice in 

 firing horses has convinced him that the success of the operation, 

 if performed for the removal of lameness, where the ordinary 

 means have failed, whether situate in a joint or a sinew, depends 

 solely on making each separate line or incision from end to end, 

 completely through the skin or common integuments, cutis as well 

 as cuticle, and boldly exposing the cellular tissue forming the im- 

 mediate covering of the Hgaments, tendons, periosteum, &c., with 

 all due caution, of course, not to pass the instrument so near as to 

 wound or scar these important structures." In spavin, his prac- 

 tice, as we have already seen, is to '' penetrate deeply the diseased 

 part, actually neurotomizing it." 



In a case of articular spavin I feel no hesitation whatever in 

 saying, that the deeper or more severe the firing, compatible with 



