108 DISEASES OF THE HORSE’S FOOT 
will offer relief from pain, and restore to work an otherwise 
useless animal. In support of that we will now quote the 
recognised advantages of the operation. 
That in many cases, when all other methods—surgical 
and medicinal—have failed, there is an immediate and 
total freedom from pain and lameness no one will deny. 
This, if it restores to active work an animal that would 
otherwise have had to have been cast aside, is ample 
justification for giving the operation, in spite of its many 
unfortunate terminations, a real place among the more 
highly favoured remedial measures to our hand. 
‘For Contracted Hoofs, viewing them in the light of 
idiopathic disease, or as being the immediate cause of the 
existing lameness in the uninflamed condition of the foot, 
and when consequential changes of its organism have taken 
place which bid defiance to therapeutic measures, newrotony 
is a warrantable resource’ (Percival). 
‘For Ringbone neurotomy has been practised with 
perfect success, after blistering and firing had both failed, 
notwithstanding the work the animal had to perform 
afterwards was of the most trying nature’ (iid.). 
For Naviculay Disease, when that malady is diagnosed, 
the earlier neurectomy is performed the better. The 
greater work given to the diseased bursa and bone, and 
the return of the contracted heels to the normal, brought 
about by the greater freedom with which the foot is used, 
are claimed by many to effect a cure. 
Writing of navicular disease, and mentioning his belief 
in the possibility of the diseased bone effecting its own 
repair after the operation, Harold Leeney, M.R.C.V.S., 
Says : 
‘The expansion of the heel, and rapid development of 
the frog (in this and many other cases) immediately after 
the operation, has not, I venture to think, attracted so 
much attention as it deserves, and may have something 
to do with those cases which appear to be actually cured, 
not merely made to go sound by absence of pain.’ * 
* Veterinary Record, vol. xi., p. 297. 
