188 NEUROTOMY. 



medicine is confessedly powerless, together with the serviceability 

 of neurotomized horses, not for driving only, but for riding, and 

 even for hunting. It appears, however, from this account, that 

 Moorcroft did not continue long enough in England to perfect that 

 which he had so promisingly commenced ; and that, after he had 

 left, neurotomy had died away in repute, or rather had never been 

 made public until it was proclaimed to the veterinary world by 

 Professor Sewell ; and therefore to that gentleman is equitably 

 awarded the honour of being the originator or introducer of a 

 practice which has saved numbers of horses from premature 

 slaughter ; and while it has spared them days of unceasing pain, 

 has restored a very great majority of them, at least for a definite 

 time, on account of their serviceability, to the keeping and favour 

 of their masters. 



The Rationale of Neurotomy is plain and simple. Lameness 

 is the manifestation of pain. Deprive the part in pain of its sense 

 of feeling, and the pain, with the lameness consequent on it, ceases; 

 not to return until sensation shall return, and not necessarily even 

 then. Neurotomy, therefore, as a remedy, differs from all other 

 remedies, insomuch as the relief afforded by it is instantaneous : 

 divide the nervous cord going to the seat of lameness, so as to cut 

 off all communication between the part in pain and the sensorium, 

 and comparing nervous action to what it in some respects so nearly 

 resembles, the same effect is produced as when the wire of com- 

 munication is cut proceeding from some electrical machine or bat- 

 tery. Electricity, like nervous action, is at an end ; the electric 

 battery is charged in vain ; the brain can no longer take cognizance 

 of impressions or injuries inflicted on the neurotomized part. 

 Suppose the seat of lameness to be the foot, the plantar nerve j 

 being the trunk whence that organ derives its nervous branches, is 

 the nervous cord to be cut to deprive the foot of sensibility : but 

 there are two plantar nerves as trunks, one on either side of the 

 pastern, and the division of but one of them will paralyze but the 

 half of the foot of the same side ; consequently, to render both 

 sides of the foot insensible to pain and lameness, both plantar nerves 

 must be divided. This done, a horse may be cut, or stabbed, or 

 struck any where below the division of the nervous trunks — or at 



