178 TREATMENT OF NAVICULARTHRITIS. 



of the lame foot in an ample hot poultice of bran and linseed meal. 

 The poultice will require renewal every night, as well as every 

 morning after the warm bath. And while this emollient treatment 

 is soothing and relieving the foot, I commonly exhibit a brisk pur- 

 E^ative. The purge will occupy the animal three days, and the day 

 he is admitted or seen for the first time reckoning for the fourth, 

 three days more will complete the week, at the expiration of which 

 time he may have his shoe tacked on, and be seen out. By such 

 simple treatment, and a week's repose, many such cases have I 

 seen restored to soundness; but then must be taken into this 

 account the important circumstance of these cases coming to me on 

 the very day, I might almost say on the very hour, of their com- 

 mencement. Such prompt application cannot be looked for in 

 private practice, and therefore it is that the nature of the case 

 becomes materially altered. Still, in many instances when late 

 application has been made, supposing the case to be a first attack, 

 and it be highly desirable, as I said before, to have the horse made 

 sound without blemish, the emollient plan may be tried : it may 

 verv likely fail, but it will hardly put the animal's lame foot in a 

 worse condition for more surely effective treatment than it was 

 formerly in, and, after all, but a week or so will be lost. 



The permanently restorative Treatment consists in 

 topical blood-letting and blistering. 



Blood-letting is practicable, so as to have a topical or local 

 effect, either from the foot itself or from some bloodvessel directly 

 supplying blood to it, or returning blood from it. The pastern 

 arteries and veins have been opened with this view; puncture of the 

 former, however, has been found to be attended with inconvenience 

 and even danger, while the latter have yielded too spare and uncer- 

 tain a stream of blood for the evacuation to be such as was likely 

 to be followed by any or much beneficial result. The part from 

 which blood is usually drawn, and with more convenience and 

 effect, perhaps, than from any other, is the toe of the foot, or, rather, 

 the anterior border of the horny sole, whereabouts is to be found 

 the circumflex artery of the foot. Not that this vessel supplies the 

 navicular joint, its arteries coming principally from the artery of the 

 frog : there, however, exists so free an intercommunication between 



