418 
- EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
What this was, what its use or intention could be, he never 
could devise. He seemed to have no other conjecture even 
on the subject than that, as it contained fluid, such fluid 
might possibly be the veritable “ nervous fluid/ 5 Still, he 
thought very much of it, and held his discovery, which was 
made in 1803, in high estimation; in proof whereof he pre- 
sented a paper on the subject to the Royal Society, which 
was read by Sir Everard Home, and afterwards published in 
their Transactions. Such had been the state of affairs in 
regard to this spinal canal for many years ; — such was their 
state, when, lo and behold ! disclosures broke forth from that 
distinguished but now deceased physiologist, Sir Charles Bell, 
demonstrating that the medulla spinalis was composed of 
columns, anterior and posterior, (or, in the quadruped, supe- 
rior and inferior,) whose line of demarcation, indicating their 
division, was this very canal , which, in fact, thus proved to 
be no canal at all. So close on the verge of one of the 
greatest discoveries ever made in anatomy and physiology 
was our late Professor. 
In the year 1818, Professor Sewell published to the 
world his grand discovery of Neurotomy. His own and 
first promulgation of it was made through a paper he pre- 
sented to the Governors of the Royal Veterinary College. 
But, subsequently, in the year 1823, a fuller and more 
finished account was given of it by his old pupil and friend, 
Mr. William Percivall, in his ‘Elementary Lectures on the 
Veterinary Art,’ that year published. On the subject — then 
a new one, and one in every horseman’s mouth and every 
veterinary surgeon’s practice — Mr. Percivall thus forcibly 
expresses himself : — 
“ If the withdrawal of pain not to be assuaged by other 
means, — if the restoration of an incurably lame horse to a 
state of comparative soundness, — if one, or both, we say, be 
considerations of importance — the first on the score of 
humanity, the last on that of interest — then Neurotomy 
will take the lead of modern discoveries in veterinary science. 
As an emanation from that institution to which the veteri- 
nary art, as an useful branch of natural knowledge, owes its 
rise and progress in this country, it is our duty to regard 
this operation in a favorable light. When we find, however, 
that the professed objects of it are no less than those we 
have here represented, with how much more exultation 
should we, as veterinarians, hail the disclosure of such a 
valuable addition to our present practice. Such, we cannot 
entertain a doubt, are the opinions of its zealous promoter ; 
such, we believe, those of its numerous advocates to have 
been ; and such would they have continued to be, had they 
