PUNCHING OFF SPAVIN. 
563 
have seen in some saddler’s shop — an instrument of 
steel with an iron hammer: these are now sold to the 
practitioners who wish to use them, by our surgical instru- 
ment makers in Edinburgh, but could be made, if required, 
by any other. I have not heard there is any patent for 
them. This is their shape. 
This instrument, and the way to use it effectually, has 
been for some years past a subject at the Edinburgh College, 
occupying two or three lectures, and is now by some parties 
getting into practice with an effect which the following cases 
will show. 
About two years ago Mr. M‘Ritchie, of Whitburgh, had a 
very fine mare slightly affected with spavin. In passing that 
place one day I was asked to look at her. My opinion was 
that if she had been neatly fired, and had laid off work for six 
months or so, she would have likely got quite well, and be little 
or nothing blemished. Mr. G. Houston, Veterinary Surgeon, 
a practitioner at this part, lately employed as a smith, 
sharpening colliers’ picks for the Marquis of Lothain’s 
gallery, at Easthouses, near this place, had gone to 
Edinburgh three or four times a week for part of two winters, 
and got a diploma. Fresh from the “ College,” with all the 
new improvements, he had got Mr. M‘Ritchie to believe he 
could punch off this spavin in three weeks, the mare not 
being required to be off work. No doubt this was a great 
improvement ; the cruel practice of firing entirely done away 
with, and work continued. The best of all, the mare w r as to 
work during the cure. None of us old pretenders could come 
up to that. Mr. M‘Ritchie swallowed the bait. The spavin 
■was punched; but, as Mr. Smeton, Veterinary Surgeon, 
Pathead, who was called in to see her some months after, 
wisely remarked, “It was like punching on a spavin.” The 
mare fevered under the operation, was unable to rise, the 
skin began to be destroyed on all the prominent parts by 
lying and sprawling under the torture ; she had to be slung ; 
and after nine months of treatment, the mare was able to do 
some work with a leg improved to nearly three times its 
thickness, and a valuable animal reduced till she is not worth 
one fourth of her value. 
