NEUROTOMY. Ill 



Every horseman will recollect cases in which the animal that seemed on the pie- 

 cedinff day to be perfectly sound becomes decidedly lame, and limps as though he 

 had lost the use of his limbs ; yet there is no thickening of the tendons, nor any 

 external inflammatory action to sliow the seat of the complaint. Mr. Cooper, of 

 Coleshill, relates a case very a])plicahle to tlie present subject. A farmer purchased 

 a horse, to all appearance sound, and rode him home — a distance of ten miles. He 

 was worked on tiie two following days, without showing the least lameness. On 

 the third day it was with great ditiiculty that he managed to limp out of the stable. 

 Mr. Cooper was sent for to examine him. The horse had clean legs and excellent 

 feet. The owner would have him blistered all around. It was done. The horse 

 was turned out to grass for two months, and came up perfectly sound. The weather 

 soon afterwards became wet and cold, and the horse again was lame ; in fact, it 

 presently appeared that the disease was entirely influenced by the changes of the 

 atmosphere. "Thus," adds Mr. C, "in the summer a horse of this description will 

 be mostly sound, while in the winter he will be generally lame." 



An account of acute rheumatism, by Mr. Thompson, of 13eith, is too valuable to be 

 omitted : — " I have had," says he, " fourteen cases of this disease. The muscles of 

 the shoulders and arms were generally the parts atfeeted. The cure was effected in 

 a few days, and consisted of a good bleeding from the jugular, and a sharp purge. 



" One of these cases was uncommonly severe. The disease was in the back and 

 loins. The horse brought forward his hind-legs under his flanks, roached his back, 

 and drew up his flanks with a convulsive twitch accompanied by a piteous groan, 

 almost every five minutes. The sympathetic fever was alarming, the pulse was 90, 

 and there was obstinate constipation of the bowels. The horse literally roared aloud 

 if any one attempted to shift him in the stall, and groaned excessivel)^ when lying. 

 He was bled almost to fainting ; and three moderate doses of aloes were given in the 

 course of two days. Injections v/ere administered, and warm fomentations were 

 frequently applied to the l)ack and loins. On the third day the physic operated 

 briskly, accompanied by considerable nausea and reduction of the pulse. From that 

 time the animal gradually recovered 



"These horses are well fed, and always in good condition; but they are at times 

 worked without mercy, which perhaps makes them so liable to these attacks." 



NEUROTOMY. 



To enable the horse to accomplish many of the tasks we exact from him, we have 

 nailed on his feet an iron defence. Without the protection of the shoe, he would not 

 only be unable to travel over our hard roads, but he would speedily become useless 

 to us. While, however, the iron protects his feet from being battered and bruised, it 

 is necessarily inflexible. It cramps and confines the hoof, and often, without great 

 care, entails on our valuable servant bad disease and excessive torture. 



The division of the nerve, as a remedy for intense pain in any part of the frame, 

 was S3'^stematically practised by human surgeons more than a century ago. Mr. 

 Moorecroft has the honour of introducing the operation of neurotomy in the veterinary 

 school. 



He had long devoted his powerful energies to the discovery of the causes and the 

 cure of lameness in the fore-foot of the horse. It was a subject worthy of him, for it 

 involved the interest of the proprietor and the comfort of the slave. He found that, 

 partly from the faulty construction of the shoe, and more from the premature and 

 cruel exaction of labour, the horse v.as subject to a variety of diseases of the foot: all 

 of them accompanied by a greater or less degree of pain — often of a very intense 

 nature, and ceasing only with the life of the animal. 



He frequently met with a strangely formidable disease, in what was called "coffin- 

 joint lameness," but to which Mr. James Turner afterwards gave the very appropriate 

 name of "navicular-joint disease." It was inflammation of the synovial membrane, 

 either of the flexor tendon or navicular bone, or both, where the tendon plays over 

 that bone ; and it was accompanied hy pain, abrasion, and gradual destruction of 

 these parts. 



For a long time he was foiled in every attempt which he made to remove or even 

 to alleviate the disease. At length he turned his thoughts to the probability of sub 



