128 
BURSAUTEE. 
CAPTAIN APPERLEY ON BURSAUTEE. 
{To the Editor of the Lahore Chronicled) 
Sir, — Being disappointed that a veterinary surgeon of long 
standing in India floes not come forward on this occasion, I 
beg leave to call your attention to a circular now publishing 
throughout the army, emanating from Captain Apperley, of 
the 4th Lancers, in which is detailed a mode of treatment for 
the cure of bursautee and quittor in horses, as practised by 
that gentleman at the Poosah branch of the central stud. 
As the subject is of some importance to Government, and 
the owners of horses, generally, I think we, as a graduated 
body — finding that it does not come through the channel of 
his veterinary surgeon, who has medical charge of all the 
stud horses — have a right to examine and report upon it, 
with a view r to determine whether it is founded upon obser- 
vation and experience, and worthy of general adoption, to 
recommend it accordingly ; or on the other hand, if we prove 
it a theoretical fallacy to discard it altogether as useless — 
believing, as I do, from its delusive character, and erroneous 
statements, that the latter fate awaits it — and also that it is 
calculated to bring discredit on us as a profession, and the 
stud veterinary surgeons in particular, if such a document, 
bearing neither the impress of science or skill, and utterly 
valueless in a practical point of view, is allowed to issue 
from the stud department without refutation. 
Every person that has read the paper must infer that 
Captain Apperley has descended to empiricism, when he 
prescribes one treatment for two diseases diametrically oppo- 
site in nature. The son of “ Nimrod,” for whose talents and 
general horse-knowledge, I entertain the highest respect, 
should have known that quittor is a simple sinus of the foot, 
requiring local remedies only, always externally placed, pro- 
duced by injury alone, and that salivation can have no effect 
whatever towards its cure. 
Again, Captain Apperley has reasoned from analogy to 
man, when he prescribes 2 or 3 grains of calomel to a horse, 
(and this Homoeopathic dose without opium to induce the 
mercury to accumulate in the system ;) really this w r ould-be 
doctor should have made himself acquainted with his subject 
before he put his hand to paper, in the face of all the Yets 
of India ; he certainly should have known that three times 
that dose, twice a day, will not produce the slightest ptyalism 
of the mouth in the period he describes, and that, as every 
real practitioner knows, 20 grains twice a day is required to 
