CASES OF NEUROTOMY. 
130 
at my stables, after travelling with difficulty twenty -six miles. 
On the 25th I invited a professional friend to assist me. He 
was cast with the spring hobbles and secured in the ordinary 
way: one leg was loosened, and I proceeded to operate. It is 
not necessary to minutely describe every step of the operation : 
the incisions were made in the skin about an inch longitudinally ; 
the nerves separated from their attachments with a scalpel, 
raised by passing under them an aneurismal needle armed with 
stout thread; the needle removed, leaving the thread, which was 
tied round the nerve : I then divided with a pair of sharp scissors, 
and about an inch was taken away ; the cuticular incisions of the 
skin enveloping the near leg were brought together and retained 
by single suture. The one most deeply fired was much thickened 
and more vascular than the other. I thereby experienced more 
difficulty in exposing the nerves to view, more especially as I 
encountered on one side a pretty large bursa, into which I 
unintentionally slipped the point of my scalpel ; it soon dis- 
charged its contents : the slip had the merit of doing me a little 
service, for I much more easily found the object of my search, 
without any ill effects afterwards following it. When the 
operation was completed and the patient allowed to rise, to our 
great satisfaction he first walked, and then trotted away, free from 
lameness. Cold water bandages were applied to the legs ; the 
wounds suppurated kindly, and at the end of a fortnight he was 
sent home and put to work. Last month (January), just a year 
from the date of the operation, I received a correspondence from 
his owner : to use his own words, he said, “ The Neurotomy 
has answered well.” 
CASE II. — Fine bay gelding, fifteen hands and a-half high, five 
years old, the property of a surgeon of Bideford, used as a hack. 
First became lame in the early part of the summer of 1849, in 
the near fore-foot, which was then of a good broad and open 
character ; the frog sound and prominent. He was then treated 
with rest, physic, bleeding from the foot, poultices, &c. ; he got 
better, and went to work ; but the lameness returned, so that in 
the winter he was again subjected to treatment. A frog seton 
was introduced, the coronet blistered, and he was afterwards 
turned into a soft marsh, where he remained until February 
1850 (about three months), came up free from lameness, and ap- 
parently was likely to stand sound; but our hopes were delusive — 
a month’s work brought about old symptoms. I then suggested 
the operation of neurotomy, and my client fell in with my sugges- 
tion. On the 30th of March I threw him, and operated, as in 
all my other cases, above the fetlock. On being released from 
his trammels, he got up, and, after going two or three hundred 
yards, ho appeared the better for the operation, but not then 
