NEUROTOMY. 
377 
Post-mortem Examination . — On the abdomen being opened, 
there was found a great quantity of feculent matter floating 
amongst the intestines ; the peritoneum was highly inflamed 
and the bowels very much distended, both with ingesta and 
gas. On the large intestines being drawn aside, a rupture of 
the colon was discovered, extending about eighteen inches, 
from which opening the fecal matter had escaped. 
This animal had been used for drawing a heavy brougham, 
and whenever he started was in the habit of plunging for- 
ward. This, I think, must have been the cause of the rup- 
ture, the stomach and bowels being at the time full of food. 
But what appeared most strange, was the difference of the 
symptoms from ordinary inflammation of the bowels. From 
the first, I was led to believe that some lesion of them had 
taken place, in consequence of the disposition shown by the 
animal to lie down, which he would do for hours at a time 
without evincing any pain. 
ON NEUROTOMY. 
By W. T. Stanley. M.R.C.V.S., Leamington. 
This operation having been lately so much commented 
upon in a sporting paper, by a Mr. Powell, as being a most 
cruel and useless one ; and which assertion, to my surprise, 
has been in a great degree confirmed by the statement 
made, that Professor Varnell informed Mr. Powell, that fre- 
quently basketsful of sloughed hoofs were sent to the College 
as the result of this operation ; and further, that the nerve 
that was excised was intimately connected with the brain; 
the inference drawn by the public from the professor’s re- 
marks are, that not only is the operation of neurotomy use- 
less, but that the brain, the primum mobile of all action in the 
animal economy, is impaired in consequence of the excision 
of a portion of the nerve. 
Since the publication of the above, I have, when recom- 
mending this operation to my clients, been often met with the 
response, “ Oh ! the hoof will be sure to come off, and you 
will also injure the animal’s brain.” Having now performed 
the operation for many years, and upon hundreds of horses, I 
aver that I know of only two cases in which the hoofs have 
sloughed off, and those were from the feet having been pricked 
in shoeing, and the treatment thereof neglected. I am fully 
