TREATMENT OF SPAVIN. 
607 
inanity would prompt us in every case to do so ; but I fear that 
in too many cases we should discover, when it was lato, that it had 
proved bad medical policy to have so acted. I must confess, there 
was a time when I shoald always have given a preference — a trial, 
at least — to simple and comparatively painless remedies, before I 
had recourse to firing; believing in Hippocrates’ aphorism, that, 
“ Quos cunque morbos medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; 
quos ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat ; quos vero ignis non sanat, in- 
sanabiles existimare oportet.” The new lights, however, of late 
years thrown upon the pathology of spavin, together with the ob- 
servation of the frequent recurrence of lameness after horses have 
been sent away “ cured” of spavin by such mild means, have 
wrought, in this respect, an entire change in my practice. View- 
ing the case as one of articular spavin — of disease within as well 
as disease without the hock joint — after having prescribed topical 
blood-letting and fomentation, and physic, and low diet, and rest, 
even though it should turn out that the case has received so much 
benefit thereby as to be restored to soundness, my advice still is, 
the firing-iron had better be “ run over” the hock to make perma- 
nent that which rest, and remedies so simple, have accomplished. 
Perhaps it will be asked here' — Why not blister or seton the hock? 
My reply is, because neither blister nor seton is likely — has by 
experience been found — to confer that lasting benefit which the 
actual cautery has been proved to afford. This, however, is too 
weighty a question to be disposed of by naked assertion : it will 
have to be considered hereafter. 
Another pointed observation of the ancients, and one we have 
never lost sight of, it having been handed down to us from genera- 
tion to generation, is the bracing and strengthening power of fir- 
ing. At one time there were breeders, and other horse-persons, in 
our own country, who, like the Arabians, would have their foals’ 
or colts’ legs and joints fired with a view of “ strengthening” them. 
Whatever effect of a sthenic description, however, firing may have 
upon legs or joints weakened by disease, I am unhesitatingly of 
opinion that no sound or normal parts can reap the same benefit 
from it ; that, in short, we cannot improve that which is already, 
of its kind , perfect. We can neither “gild refined gold” nor add 
a “ perfume to the violet.” 
The FIRING Iron in use in our own day differs, as it would 
appear, little or nothing from the fleam-shaped one described by 
Gibson. Since firing has become a sort of fashion , one prefer- 
ring it in the “ similitude of a line,” another in that of “ little palm 
branches,” or of a “ feather,” “ rose,” &c. & c., and that, in order to 
make the firing appear thus neat and pretty, it has become neces- 
