190 NEUROTOMY. 



taking a wrong direction, or he may pick up a nail on the road, 

 and no intimation whatever of injury be given, unless it happen by 

 his farrier or groom to be discovered. Such accidents, however, are 

 not of every-day occurrence, neither are they, in the hands of ex- 

 pert farriers and careful grooms, likely to happen without their 

 knowledge, and therefore have no right to be regarded in the 

 light of arguments against neurotomy further than that such hazard, 

 remote though it be, tends to the diminution of such a horse's 

 value in the market. 



The operation of neurotomy has certainly taught us important 

 uses of nerves to the foot. By imparting sensation to the organ 

 they become at once its safeguards in health and (if I may be 

 allowed the expression) its nurses in disease : they inform the 

 animal when his foot is hurt, and they warn him, through the pain 

 he feels, that the injury, or the inflammation the consequence of it, 

 will be aggravated by pressure upon it or use of it ; and therefore 

 it is that he *' favours" the ailing foot in action, and " points" 

 with it while at rest, and so in effect lays it up. This the neuro- 

 tomized horse, feeling no pain, finds no occasion for doing ; and the 

 result may, through inattention, possibly be such as I have before 

 stated, viz. suppuration of the entire foot, shedding of the hoof, and 

 even, from subsequent irritation in other parts, in the end, death 

 itself. 



But there is another use of nerve to the foot which neurotomy 

 has thrown strong light upon, and that is, the horses sense of feel- 

 ing through his hoofs. 



Does the Neurotomized Horse maintain the same Step 

 AND Tread he used before? To this important question 1 

 unhesitatingly answer, no ! — he does not. There can be no doubt 

 but that the horse /ee/s the ground upon which he is treading, and 

 that he regulates his action in consonance with such feeling, so as 

 to render his step the least jarring and fatiguing to himself, and 

 therefore the easiest and pleasantest to his rider. The tread of 

 the hoof creates a certain impression — depending on the nature of 

 the ground trodden upon, and the force and manner with which 

 the tread is made — on the nerves (of sensation) of the foot; which 

 nerves being associated above the knee, in their course to the sen- 



