NEUROTOMY. 197 



worth, or to what useful purpose he can be put, that happens to 

 be the subject of such an operation. If the horse can be shewn 

 to be still serviceable and valuable, then is he not a legitimate 

 subject for the operation. The rule of procedure f laid down 

 when treating on neurotomy in my " Lectures on the Veterinary 

 Art," so long ago as 1823, was to operate on no other but the 

 incurably lame horse ; and whenever this has been attended to, 

 not only has success been the more brilliant, but indemnification 

 from blame or reproach has been assured. 



When first neurotomy was proclaimed as a " cure" for certain 

 descriptions of lameness which all other remedies had failed to 

 remove, persons having lame horses, eager to have them restored 

 to soundness, flocked around veterinar}' surgeons to have them 

 *' unnerved ;" such appearing to them no more than an ordinary 

 remedy for an ordinary case. By this the veterinary practitioner 

 was placed in a novel and trying situation. If he refused to ope- 

 rate, he probably lost a customer ; and if he did so, he felt that he 

 was performing an operation of magnitude and risk in a case where- 

 in milder and safer means would probably prove efficacious. One 

 veterinary surgeon in our great metropolis, during the season of 

 neuroto-mania, operated on some hundreds of horses, and made 

 thereby somewhere about as many pounds sterling; and the result 

 has been, that, in quarters where " nerving" and " unnerving" 

 were phrases constantly in horse-people's mouths, the operation 

 is now hardly ever heard of, neurotomy having been set down in 

 their minds as a lamentable failure. And certainly, for the rough 

 work coach and cab and omnibus horses have to go through, for 

 farmers' work, for all business, in fine, wherein so little attention 

 is or can be paid to the feet and legs of horses, that so long as they 

 are able to go at all go they must, neurotomy is alto'gether unsuited, 

 and from them has been very properly discarded. In situations, 

 however, where scrupulous attention can be given to feet and legs, 

 and where work is not forced or even called for at times that re- 

 pose may be advisable, neurotomy judiciously practised has proved 

 of very great service in more points of view than the principal one 

 of lameness. For this reason it is to be regretted that it has found 

 so many enemies; though less surprise is excited by this so long 



