NEUROTOMY. 189 



least below where any branches are given off from the superior 

 division of the nerve — with perfect impunity : the dealer's common 

 test of a neurotomized foot being to prick the coronet with a pin ; 

 should the horse not flinch or catch up his leg, he is set down as 

 " a nerved one." 



The reason is now plain why a horse, dead lame even before 

 he be cast for the operation, becomes, from the moment neu- 

 rotomy has been performed, perfectly sound. No change whatever 

 has been effected on the disease which caused his lameness; 

 nothing, in fact, in or about the foot or limb has been altered, save 

 that the communicating sensitive cord has been cut in two, and 

 sensitive action has in consequence ceased. Although, however, 

 such alone appears as the immediate result of the operation, we find 

 it was asked by Moorcroft, as indeed it naturally would by an in- 

 quiring mind, if there were no 



Remote Effects from Neurotomy to be looked for — 

 whether the nutritive and secretory functions of the foot, deprived 

 of nervous power, would proceed as before ; and, further, what dif- 

 ference neurotomy might make in the animal's action or tread upon 

 the ground. Moorcroft had observed that, under the loss of nervous 

 energy, '' the repairing powers of the part were not injured, so far 

 as they depended upon the action of the bloodvessels ;" and sub- 

 sequent experience has confirmed this observation. Inflammation 

 appears to be the same process in a senseless as it is in a sensitive 

 foot, and the secretion of horn goes on as well in one as in 

 the other ; the grand and important difference between the two 

 being, that, supposing the neurotomized foot to receive a prick or 

 bruise, and inflammation and suppuration to follow, matter may 

 collect and burrow underneath the sole or frog, or other part, and 

 the horse, incapable of feeling any hurt in his foot, can of course 

 give no intimation of mischief, by shewing pain or lameness, to 

 his groom or master ; and consequently, unless the latter should 

 detect the evil himself, suppuration may proceed to that extent to 

 cause the hoof to separate and be cast off the foot : a catastrophe 

 which has happened more than once, and one that has been brought 

 forward as a fearful argument against the practice of neurotomy. 

 A neurotomized horse may receive a stab in being shod from a nail 



