112 VETERINARY SURGICAL OPERATIONS 



bandages, casts, and splints. (4) Button or mattress sutures 

 placed some distance from the breach so as to create an im- 

 mobilized area between them. 



7. In fine, motion, tension, sepsis, and obstruction to 

 drainage are the four great banes of suturing that the veteri- 

 narian must combat intelligently. 



Firing. 



DEFINITION. — Firing is an equine surgical operation 

 consisting of branding or stabbing the skin that surrounds 

 lesions of bones, tendons, ligaments, or sheaths in the form 

 of more or less symmetrical lines or points, for the purpose 

 of curing or preventing lameness. It is a cutaneous, hot-iron 

 cauterization, aimed at underlying disease processes. The 

 word "firing" has a definite meaning in veterinary surgery. 

 It refers to a special operation, in distinction to "actual 

 cautery" which signifies the method by which this and other 

 surgical procedures are accomplished.. For example, the 

 cauterization of the amputated tail or the ablated keloid is' 

 actual cautery, but it is not firing. The word "firing" is re- 

 served by the modern hippologist as the universal appelation 

 for the branding or puncturing of the skin in the treatm'ent of 

 lameness. 



The surfaces of the loins, the buttocks, the throat, the 

 withers, have in bygone days been submitted to firing for 

 deep seated lesions within them, but these treatments are 

 little used by the modern veterinarian. They have been dis- 

 carded as worse than useless. Deep firing accomplished by 

 first exposing diseased tissues through incisions (subcutane- 

 ous cauterization) has also passed into a well-deserved ob- 

 scurity. 



HISTORY. — Firing is too old to determine its origin. 

 It has been described in all books touching upon the diseases 

 of the horse, from the earliest days of veterinary history 

 until the present time. In all epochs it has been favorably 

 mentioned as a markedly effectual method of treatment of 

 various diseases and injuries affecting the limbs of horses, 

 but has been seldom ever mentioned as a treatment for the 

 other domestic species. It has always been, and undoubtedly 

 always will be a strictly equine operation, because of the 

 dearth of suitable indications in the other species. In the, 

 early days of modern veterinary medicine it was somewhat 

 more popular than today, having been supplanted by other 

 more rational treatments in many instances. It has always 



