SHOULDER LAMENESS. 243 



chloride of mercury or the arsenious acid may be used ; though 

 decided preference is given to the former. A small piece, weighing 

 gr. ij, is introduced underneath the skin at the point of the articula- 

 tion, and suffered to remain there eight-and-forty hours ; from which 

 neither the tumefaction that may follow, nor the absorption of the 

 salt, nor the state of the wound, need cause any alarm. One un- 

 toward result on occasions takes place. The purulent matter gene- 

 rated insinuates itself underneath the skin, and causes a partial 

 detachment of it from the tissues beneath. The insertion of a tent 

 or seton, however, into the dependent pouch will speedily remedy 

 all. Some persons use the sulphate of copper; but this is far less 

 effective than the mercury. And the arsenic is more objectionable 

 still, from its uniformly occasioning a good deal of tumefaction. 

 Now and then it has produced poisonous effects. 



Setons — which are no more than new-fashioned and for some 

 cases improved forms of the old tent, plug, diVidi row el — are by some 

 practitioners employed in the place of blisters. To blisters, how- 

 ever, they are decidedly inferior both in point of activity and 

 efficacy. If used at all, they might be made trial of in cases that 

 had become chronic, and seemed to require something in the shape 

 of a perpetual issue. After all, they form but a link in the long 

 chain of counter-irritants ; and are from their nature calculated 

 rather to do good by their unceasing and protracted action than 

 from any specific virtue resident in them. 



Relapse. In every case of lameness almost, it is hardly less 

 our duty to change that state as soon as we can for one of sound- 

 ness than it is to guard against relapse of ailment ; for not only is 

 a relapse always less promising to treat than an original case of 

 lameness, but it lays the practitioner open to taunts and reflections 

 on the part of his employers and others as having not cured but 

 simply ''patched up" the case. Now, shoulder-lameness, like 

 navicularthritis, happens to be a case very likely to return should 

 the subject of it be taken to work too shortly after soundness has 

 been restored ; and therefore it behoves the practitioner to keep 

 his patient in hospital, or at rest at least, as long as he can ; at all 

 events, to caution the owner of the risk he runs in disobeying this 

 wholesome injunction. In the course of our practice, we have 



