386 TRANSACTIONS AT THE ALFORT SCHOOL 
between these two parts thus altered, adhesions establish 
themselves to the destruction of the glistening pulley-like 
texture, through which the tendon performs its action. 
What can neurotomy effect in cases such as these ? It cannot 
restore to the tendon its former texture or its glistening 
surface 4 , its volume, its thickness, or its tenacity. Nay, more 
than this, neurotomy cannot prove completely efficacious in 
an organ that has undergone such changes, in stifling the 
pain which is a necessary accompaniment of them, and which 
plays a part so influential in the production of lameness. 
In fact, to a certain extent, it -would appear that pain finds 
its way to the sensorium through other channels of com- 
munication than the nervous chords, the physiological con- 
ductors of sensation ; the same as the plurae, the peritoneum, 
and mucous lining of the intestines, are, though in the normal 
state endowed with a sensibility very obscure, under inflamma- 
tion become the seat of the most intense and intolerable pain, 
of which the nervous filaments of the ganglionic system are 
the conductors to the centre of perception; the same as 
the digital extremity, of which the communication with the 
sensorium has been interrupted by complete section of all the 
nervous chords radiating from it, likewise becomes the point 
of departure of the most painful sensations whenever inflam- 
mation has invaded the deep-seated tissues composing it. 
Is the sensation in this case transmitted by the ganglionic 
filaments belonging to the arterial tunics of the part ? It is 
possible. Be this, however, as it may, so it always happens 
in practice; it being no rare thing to see horses in whom one 
foot has been neurotomised remain insensible to the prick 
of a nail in the act of shoeing them, and to such a degree that 
the farrier, not being aware that the horse is pricked, under 
the belief that the nail has gone in the right direction, leaves 
the nail sticking in the quick. Suddenly, the horse falls 
quite lame when inflammation comes to follow the prick, 
and to produce gangrene of the sub-corneous tissues, and 
caries of the bone. From this we may conclude incontestibly, 
that the tissues rendered insensible by the operation of 
neurotomy to the ordinary excitants, and even to the imme- 
diate influence of traumatic agents, may recover their lost 
sensibility the moment inflammation has aroused in them 
nutritive actions. This is a phenomenon of daily observation, 
and admits of being produced at pleasure. Therein, no 
doubt, resides the explanation of those returns of lameness 
observed sometimes in a longer or shorter interval, after 
neurotomy having, for immediate result, the dispersal of them. 
These relapses have been attempted to be explained through 
