NEUROTOMY. 205 



as from above them ; hence the difficulty, next to impossibility, 

 indeed, in some instances, of cutting off nervous communication. 

 This circumstance, taken into account with one other, viz. the 

 frequently varied and extensive seat of the disease, will account 

 for the failures that have attended attempts to restore spavined 

 horses to soundness through neurotomy. I do not mean to say that 

 such experiments have not at times succeeded, or that they may 

 not succeed again, when the spavined case be proved to be isolated, 

 or to consist simply in exostosis ; though this last is a case 

 wherein neurotomy is seldom called for. Furthermore, it must 

 be remembered, that, in operating on nerves running to muscles as 

 well as to other parts, we are dividing motor as well as sensitive 

 fibres; and that thereby not sensation alone is destroyed, but motion 

 likewise, leaving the part to which the divided nerve is running 

 destitute of motion as well as sensation : therefore it is that neu- 

 rotomy, as a remedy for removing pain only, is not applicable when 

 the seat of pain or lameness is above the knee or hock. Nor, I 

 may add, has neurotomy been found any other but injurious in 

 what go by the name of hack sinew cases ; and for the twofold 

 reason, of the difficulty there is in completely cutting off sensation, 

 and of the liability that still must exist in every deranged or dis- 

 eased tendon or theca to what we familiarly call " break down" 

 afresh under the continued operation of weight and extraordinary 

 muscular force. 



Neurotomy has other Objects besides the removal of lame- 

 ness. In effecting the immediate and total abstraction of pain and 

 irritation, it has rendered marked service in cases of altogether a 

 different nature from lameness, as well as of entirely opposite nature, 

 one to another. 



Both the oBstral and generative functions have become restored 

 through neurotomy. Brood mares that have proved barren in con- 

 sequence of painful lameness annihilating in them all sexual desire, 

 and that have ceased to have at the usual season any return of the 

 oestrum, have, from losing such pain, had their natural generative 

 functions restored, and become again good breeders. 



" In 1822," writes Mr. Rick wood, in The Veterinarian, 

 vol. iii, p. 213, '' a chestnut cart mare at Oakley, the property 



