THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
YOL. XIX, No. 224. AUGUST 1846. New Series, No. 56. 
LAMENESS. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S. 
Treatment of Spavin. 
[Continued from p. 366.] 
Remedies for Spavin. 
AS soon as it is ascertained that a horse’s lameness proceeds from 
the existence of spavin, every person of any experience in the 
affairs of the stable will tell you at once, that the remedy is blis- 
tering or firing the hock. These, we have seen, constituted the 
curative agents of the farriers before our time ; they are in no less 
estimation by farriers and others, nay, by veterinarians too, of the 
present day. Were I disposed to follow the current of opinion, 
professional as well as unprofessional, I might, therefore, sum up 
the treatment of spavin in two words, blister and fire , or fire and 
blister. Not that it is my intention to speak disparagingly of 
these two popular, potent, valuable remedies; only to inquire 
whether they really possess in themselves value sufficient to en- 
gross our attention to the exclusion of all others. 
With no disease has empiricism made itself more busy than 
with spavin. Be the disease within or without the joint, by no- 
body has it ever been regarded as constitutional. No veterinary 
surgeon has ever suspected spavin to be connected with any rheu- 
matic or other disordered state of the constitution ; and on this ac- 
count, on account of the undisturbed good health spavined horses 
commonly enjoy, and the conclusion, therefore, that the disease of 
the hock was purely local, as well as from the conviction of 
the uncertainty or hopelessness of recovery through ordinary 
remedies, have, it would seem, more experiments been made 
VOL. xix. 3 M 
