A Castrator's Error* 



J. L. Perry, M, R. C. V. S., Cardiff, Wales 



I received a letter asking me to attend a cart 

 horse, aged three, upon which an attempt at cas- 

 tration had been made by an unqualified man 

 three days previously. 



The owner said in his letter: "The castrator, 

 a man who does all that kind of work about here 

 and has hitherto been most successful, 'bunched' 

 up something in the clam. I saw at once it was 

 not a testicle, and told him so. He insisted that 

 the colt was malformed and that it was the other 

 testicle all right. I, however, left in disgust, and 

 learned afterwards that he had at once proceeded 

 to sear through this 'something' with the hot iron, 

 immediately this was completed about twelve 

 inches of penis fell from the horse's sheath to the 

 ground." So he had amputated the penis in mis- 

 take for a testicle! He then found and removed 



*Beprinted from American Journal 0} Veterinary Medicine, May, 1911. 



