TREATMENT OF NAVICULARTHRITIS. 183 



for complete recovery from the effects of the blister, or for the more 

 perfect subsidence of the lameness. 



But supposing, after all this, that the lameness continues, if not 

 to the same degree, still in too palpable a degree to admit of the 

 animal being re-taken to work, what at this stage is to be done 1— 

 what more can be put in practice for the relief of the case ] 

 Having recourse to blood-letting and blistering again would be inju- 

 dicious, there beingmost probably nothing to call for it. Whatever 

 inflammation existed at first has most likely by this time departed 

 altogether from the navicular joint; or, if it has not wholly ceased, 

 has subsided into a lingering chronic action which hardly calls for, 

 or is likely to be very little benefited by, repetition of blood-letting. 

 There may be — indeed, probably there will be — some heat and 

 tumefaction remaining about the pastern and coronet; but this is 

 most likely the effect of the blister, and therefore need hot be 

 heeded further than as some guide to us concerning our future 

 treatment of the case. 



In this stage of an unrelieved or uncured case I have frequently 

 tried the frog seton ; though hardly ever, I may add, with such 

 result as has satisfied me of any decidedly beneficial operation it 

 has had : on the contrary, the horse has often gone as lame after 

 the withdrawal of the seton as he did before : I have therefore 

 discontinued using the frog seton in navicularthritis. The prac- 

 tice I now adopt — in the case before us — is rather of an assuasive 

 than a counter-irritant character. It consists simply in employ- 

 ment of refrigeration and rest. This, whilst it cools the exter- 

 nal parts, and robs them of any heat or inflammatory action they 

 may still retain, abstracts any chronic inflammation that may 

 linger about the parts within, at the same time that it softens 

 and supples the hoof. Having had the tip on the lame foot re- 

 moved — supposing this has not been done before — and the sole 

 thinned afresh, the toe shortened, and the quarters rasped, I recom- 

 mend that the horse should stand with his fore feet in clay. The 

 simple plan I adopt is to make a clay bed in the horse's stall, of 

 sufficient breadth to render it impossible for him to place his fore 

 feet in any situation out of it, and deep enough with clay to 

 bury the hoofs of the feet, as they stand, in it. In this bed I 



