118 REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 



eventually ends in the return of normal structure and function, 

 or in such changes as possess sufficient approximation thereto to 

 enable the animal to use the part or parts, formerly incapacitated 

 from disease, with that freedom which passes under ordinary ob- 

 servation for a condition of soundness. 



Both in first impressions and in subsequent effects, blisters and 

 setons fall short of the actual cautery ; added to which, the latter 

 in its operation from first to last is found to possess a power of 

 working good in the restoration of parts much injured or altered 

 by disease which the former under no circumstances whatever 

 evince. We have no restorer equivalent to the hot iron — no- 

 thing of equal power to do good or to do harm. With it, with 

 caution, humanity, and judgment, the veterinary surgeon may, 

 without fear of incurring the reproach of the philanthropist or 

 lover of his horse, work a great amount of good ; without such 

 judgment and caution, he will be deservedly set down as one who, 

 through ignorance or inconsideration, has put his unfortunate pa- 

 tient to cruel, and wanton, and uncalled-for torture. 



The after-treatment of the fired Parts used in former 

 days to be '' left to Nature." After standing tied up in his stall 

 for two or three or four days and nights, the custom was to besmear 

 his fired parts with train-oil, or grease of some description, and 

 then to turn the horse into a loose box, or else at once to turn him 

 out into some field or paddock or straw-yard : thus were the scores 

 made by the red-hot iron suffered, beneath a coating of oil or 

 grease, to scab and fester, and harbour matter under the eschars, 

 which ever and anon fell off, or else got knocked or rubbed off, 

 exposing raw bloody surfaces of cutis, from the aspect of which it 

 was evident enough what mischief had been ail the while brooding 

 amidst such a medley of grease and scab and matter and filth. 

 And such mischief becomes of a nature not to be repaired. The 

 true skin — the cutis vera — is seen becoming ulcerated wherever 

 purulent matter is lodging upon it; the consequence of which 

 is, that the bulbs or roots of the hair are all the while suffering 

 destruction, so that when the chasms made by ulceration come to 

 be healed up, such places are found unprovided with hair : the 

 bulbs or roots from which the hairs spring never becoming rege- 



