52 Williams, Fisher, and Udall: The Spavin Group. 
promptly passes, leaving only a local permanent one, the operation 
proves comparatively safe, while in those regions where the 
disease is usually severe, with long continued and serious sys- 
temic disturbance, it becomes highly dangerous. Veterinarians 
operating on the two different classes will have opposite views 
as to its safety. We have seen cases of plantar neurotomy for 
navicular disease go down in thirty days, and under different 
conditions another work perfectly for ten or more years. 
The ethics of neurotomy is an embarrassing question for the 
practitioner. No more humane or economic operation is known 
to the veterinarian in properly selected cases, relieving constant 
suffering of a severe type and restoring to usefulness an animal 
otherwise no longer fit for work. 
But probably eighty per cent. of unnerved horses are ille- 
gitimately or surreptitiously sold to an innocent purchaser, and 
the important question arising is the moral responsibility of the 
operator. Plainly the veterinarian has for a money consideration 
disguised a serious unsoundness in an animal and has thereby _ 
aided the vendor in imposing upon an innocent purchaser. 
Where an owner submits an animal for the operation with a 
clear intent to use the horse legitimately whether at work or in 
sale, the freedom of the veterinarian is evident, but when he 
clearly desires the operator to aid him in making a dishonest sale, 
it seems to us that he becomes a party to the fraud. Between 
these two extremes the question of propriety on the part of the 
veterinarian vacillates. 
A recent German writer proposes that in performing neu- 
rotomy care should be taken to leave an unsightly and telltale 
scar to warn the unwary purchaser, but this device would only 
warn the wary buyer, and no scar, soever large, would protect 
the uninformed. Neither would most of us agree to perform 
an operation in such a bungling and unsurgical manner as to 
insure a scar where it can be generally avoided. 
Strict laws with severe penalties or selling unnerved horses 
without the knowledge of the purchaser might be made to check. 
the evil. 
EXAMINATIONS FOR SOUNDNESS AND SALE. 
In the examination of horses offered for sale, the search 
for the spavin group of lameness constitutes an important 
part, largely because they may be disguised. Their bilateral 
