SPAVIN. 293 
lame, let it alone. However large, however unsightly the deposit may 
be, do not run the chance of exciting a new action in a part where 
disease exists in a quiescent form. 
The regular treatment is to purge, give diuretics, bleed, blister, rowel, 
seton, periostoteomy, neurotomy, fire, and punch. The bleeding may be 
great or small, local or general; the blister, mild or severe, applied over 
half the joint at a time, or rubbed in after the limb has been scored by 
the iron. Rowels and setons may also be simple, or they may be smeared 
with irritants, which are made of different strengths. Periostoteomy 
may be single, or may be made compound by the addition of a seton 
and a blister. Neurotomy is very unsatisfactory, and very often a most 
tedious affair when employed to cure spavin. The fire may be down to 
the true skin; it may be through the skin, and on to the tumor; or it 
may be inflicted by means of a blunt-pointed instrument, which, when 
heated, burns its way into the bone itself. The punch also admits of 
variety ; it may be with or without a blister; it may be holes made in a 
living body, which holes are filled with a curroding paste. Or the oper- 
ation may consist of the exposure of the bone, and cutting off the offend- 
ing portion with a saw, or knocking away part of a breathing frame 
with a chisel and a mallet. 
All these tortures have for centuries been inflicted; they have been 
practiced upon thousands of animals, only for men, at this day, to doubt 
whether the cruelty has been attended with the slightest service. Flesh, 
as capable of feeling as our own, has been cut, irritated, burnt, and 
punched for hundreds of years; and now, at the twelfth hour, such 
operations are not discarded, but their efficacy is mildly questioned. 
Reader, if you have a horse which is lame from spavin, and your cal- 
culations tell you it will not pay to nurse the cripple, have it slaughtered. 
Do not consent to have it tortured for a chance; do not sell it to the 
certainty of a terrible old age and of immediate torment. 
The cure for spavin is good food and rest — perfect rest: such 
rest or stagnation as a healthy horse submits to in the stable. This, 
enjoined for months, with the occasional application of a mild blister, 
with the best of food, to enable nature to rectify man’s abuse, will do 
more good, cost no more money, and occupy no more time than the 
devilries usually adopted, and very often adopted without success. As 
an additional motive on the side of humanity, it may be stated that the 
horse suffers much more when disease is located in the hind than when 
it is exhibited upon the fore leg. The ravages which, in the first case, 
would endanger the life, in the last would be borne with comparative 
tranquillity. The posterior parts of the animal seem to be endowed 
with exquisite sensibility; yet, in spite of this, the so-called cure for 
