AMERICAN VETERINARY PRACTICE. 
255 
The Hooks are very common : they are of the nature of oph- 
thalmia. Their treatment consists in seizing and excising 
the membrana nictatans, of which total blindness is generally 
the consequence. 
The Swinnie, or shoulder-lameness, is the most common 
of all lamenesses. The Americans go-a-head on their horses 
as well as in other things. They ride and drive like mad- 
men. Trotting with them is not a fashionable way of riding 
a fine horse; he must be a pacer or a r acker ; he must run 
between a trot and gallop. $500 is not an uncommon 
price for a fast one. There pass few Sunday afternoons 
but, on the road, or clown the river , buggy races come off. 
Smashed buggies, smashed horses, and often smashed men, 
are not uncommon. Their roads are bad, their streets 
rough, and consequently navicular disease in their horses’ 
feet is common. It is what they call Swinnie. The treatment 
is setoning, rowelling, and blistering the shoulders, and other, 
the very places, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the poor 
animal is not lame in. 
The Big Head is an excessive swelling of the head, or 
what we might call Erysipelas ; it is not common among 
horses here. 1 have frequently fallen in with it among cattle, 
in which it gives way to the treatment of bleeding, purging, 
cupping, &c. ; but there the horse is seared with a large 
piece of hot iron, on both sides, from the eye to the nose, and 
on each side of the lower jaws ; by which large scars are 
made, which continue to remain as long as he lives. 
Nephritis is rather more common than it is with us — the 
treatment equally absurd. Other diseases are such as we 
have here. Operations are done for the lampas, glibes, &c. 
All saddle and harness horses are docked, and their tails set 
by pricking; an operation certainly superior, where it may be 
required with us, to our plan of dividing the muscles in two 
or three places, since it leaves no scar. It is done by prick- 
ing the muscles with a small instrument (a shoemaker’s awl), 
and keeping the horse in pullies a considerable time. How- 
ever, tetanus often follows the operation. 
I wrote you in August last on an old method which 
seems to be endeavouring to be renewed, what they call 
punching off spavin in the hocks of the horse. I happened to 
be in company with a few farmers, some nights ago, in the 
neighbourhood of Mr. Houston’s, Veterinary Surgeon, Pres- 
ton, where I was told some person had written a first rate 
paper for him, in which my assertions were entirely refuted : 
adding, that the thing was personal , or rather like it. As for 
the paper being intended to be “ personal,” or from any 
