REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 113 



the safety of the joint, the greater, in fact, the counter-irritation 

 produced, the greater is likely to be the benefit accruing therefrom. 

 Persons who have been fond of plugging the spavined hock with 

 caustic, after making perforations in the exostosis with the actual 

 cautery, have often succeeded in conferring signal and permanent 

 relief; and I look upon this severe application of the firing-iron 

 as much the same in regard to effect, there being risk in both cases 

 of doing harm by inducing sloughing beyond what was intended, 

 and in neither case being there any absolute certainty, when the 

 case is one of inveterate and established lameness, what will be 

 the result. 



There is a notorious fact in regard to spavins in process of cure 

 or under treatment, which must not be lost sight of; and that is, 

 that, notwithstanding ahorse may experience a return of his lame- 

 ness after his first treatment for spavin, or may not, perhaps, have 

 been benefited by it, yet let him become sound from secondary or 

 subsequent treatment, and the chances are he Avill continue sound 

 at his work, and always afterwards remain so ; the explanation 

 of which appears to be, that, so long as any periosteal or liga- 

 mentary tissues clothing or connecting the cuneiform bones are 

 left unconverted into osseous matter, inflammation will return, and 

 lameness be the consequence ; but, from the moment the cuneiform 

 bones become consolidated from osseous deposition, or completely 

 anchylosed, inflammatory action ceases in the diseased parts : the 

 horse having the main articulation of the hock — that between the 

 tibia and astragalus — left unimpaired, sufficient for the flexion 

 and extension of the limb, efficient, indeed, for all the ordinary 

 purposes of motion, and constituting of itself in action what com- 

 monly passes for functional soundness. 



The Firing Iron in use in our own day differs, as it would 

 appear, little or nothing from the fleam-shaped one described by 

 Gibson. Since firing has become a sort of fashion, one prefer- 

 ring it in the " similitude of a line," another in that of " little palm 

 branches," or of a " feather," '' rose," &c. &c., and that, in order to 

 make the firing appear thus neat and pretty, it has become neces- 

 sary to have the horse cast to perform the operation, the firing 

 irons have been made shorter in their shafts, and straighter or less 



VOL. IV. Q 



