484 
SPAVIN. 
days, cast aside as an inefficacious remedy. There are three places 
from which we may draw blood with considerable effect on disease 
in the hock: — one is the saphena vein in the thigh; another, one 
of the superficial veins upon the hock ; a third, the artery at the 
toe of the foot. Of these I prefer the first, taking care to open the 
vein as low as I conveniently can, and thereby to render the eva- 
cuation as topical as is possible. We cannot always be certain of 
obtaining the quantity we may desire, from the superficial veins 
running over the side of the hock ; and as most of these veins 
communicate with the saphena, there seems no great good in pre- 
ferring them. The toe of the foot is too far distant from the seat 
of disease. 
It appears strange that early and copious abstractions of blood 
should be so universally recommended and practised for disease 
of the navicular joint; and yet for the disease of the hock-joint — 
which is of an analogous nature to it — nothing should be thought 
of but firing and blistering. Neither theory nor experience will 
countenance inconsistency like this. Under the same circum- 
stances there is as good cause for bleeding in articular spavin as 
in navicular joint disease ; the reason why it is not “ found to 
answer” being, that it is not put into practice under similar cir- 
cumstances. A horse falls lame in one of his fore limbs, and the 
lameness becomes too evident to escape observation; and his 
master, either from sympathy or shame, at once desists riding the 
animal, and takes measures for his restoration. But a horse may 
fall lame in one of his hind limbs, and his owner not discover it, 
at all events not for some time, or may mistake it for “ cramp,” 
or some “ peculiar gait” the animal has acquired ; and even should 
he detect the lameness, still, as it does not amount to enough to 
incapacitate the horse from working, and as the “ stiffness” he 
manifests when first brought out of the stable “goes off” through 
exercise, he is continued at work until he evinces absolute in- 
capability or lameness to a degree to excite shame, if not com- 
passion, in the breast of his master. For these reasons we do 
not have spavined horses brought to us for treatment at so early 
a period of the disease as other cases of lameness, or at nearly so 
early a stage of their disease as, to render their cure probable or 
hopeful, we ought to receive them at. I shall now relate a 
couple of cases — out of several I could produce — to shew the 
amount and kind of relief we may hope to afford in recent in- 
flammatory spavin by blood-letting. 
Case I. — Jan. 3, 1839, D 4, a five-year-old grey mare, never 
known to have been lame previously, while at work in the riding- 
school, suddenly manifested lameness in one hind leg. She was 
immediately brought out to be shewn to me. 1 found her quite 
