THE HORSE IN SICKNESS AND DISEASE 445 



ordinary circumstances, a gallon is reckoned a moderate 

 bleeding ; under pressing disease, take three gallons ; four 

 have been taken. By way of a rough estimate, a gallon of 

 blood maybe reckoned equal to the loss of about a pint in man. 

 Though under conditions of health, and forms of disease of 

 no great consequence, we are in the habit of prescribing so 

 many pounds or quarts of blood to be drawn, yet, when it 

 becomes necessary to make a sensible impression on the 

 system, our only safe and true guide as to quantity is a 

 steady observance of the effects produced on the animal as 

 the blood flows from its vessels. 



ROWELS AND SETONS. 



These are merely different modes of applying the principle 

 of counter-irritation, thus drawing away the inflammation 

 from the point attacked in the form of purulent issue. In 

 this point of view, blisters, rowels, and setons are merely 

 three methods to attain the same object, and their applica- 

 bility is merely governed by circumstances; the blister 

 being the most expeditious in acute cases, the rowel and 

 seton more certain and permanent in chronic aff'ections. 



A Rowel can only be formed where the skin is loose, as 

 in the chest. Having prepared a round piece of leather, 

 with a hole in the centre, and about the size of a crown 

 piece, wrapped with a skein of fine tow smeared with 

 digestive ointment, we cut the skin with the rowelling 

 scissors, and with the forefinger, or the " cornet " (a piece 

 of crooked horn made for the purpose), or the handle of 

 the improved scissors, separate the skin from the under- 

 lying tissue for the space of an inch. The circular leather 

 is then introduced, the opening plugged up with tow, and 

 in four or five days suppuration is established. The rowel 

 should now be turned every twelve hours, the matter 

 allowed to flow out, and the rowel be kept scrupulously 

 cleansed every twenty-four hours. We do not think the 

 digestive ointment, or any other application beyond the 

 tow, at all necessary. 



Setons are tapes, threads, or lamp-cottons passed under 

 the skin by needles made for the purpose. Setons may be 

 introduced in almost every part of the body : the side or 

 front of the face, the poll, the throat, the neck, the back, 

 the loins, the arms and feet are all available for t>his 



