638 THE EFFICACY OF DEEP CAUTERY LESIONS. 
spavin, is identical and only on a par with the prevailing practice 
of expert farriers a hundred years ago. If they did penetrate the 
skin with the cautery and lay bare the morbid structures upon 
joints successfully , where are to be found their instructions in 
print 1 I look in vain through his pet author, Gibson. There is 
no Old Parr living to shew us what they did. I do not doubt 
for a moment but they occasionally fired deeply, and often too 
deeply ; but I defy him to produce any specific directions, or any 
data, scientific or otherwise, as to the requisite curative depth, or 
the critical point when to stop the instrument. There is comprised 
in this much pure surgery , and, as an old hand, I am competent 
to declare, that it is to this day so much in requisition as to con- 
stitute a third of the practice of the busy general practitioner. 
I hope this distinguished writer will forgive me for my boldness 
in presuming to account for the manner in which he has fallen into 
this error. I believe that Mr. P.’s experience of spavin has been 
as great as any man living, considering his opportunities of ob- 
servation, and they have been numerous ; but his range has been 
circumscribed : he has never been a general practitioner ; there 
are diversified forms of spavin to which he has never alluded, 
and permanent cures of chronic spavin by the deep lesions are 
effected daily, both in town and country, by the scientific and ex- 
perienced hand of those who have energetically adopted the bold 
method. 
I cannot refrain from observing also, that there exists a strictly 
ligamentous disease of the hock-joint, which is so rife that it is a 
precursor to bone-spavin in the proportion of about two cases out 
of every three. Upon this important division of the pathology of 
the hock our author has not favoured us with one line. 
In perusing his Anatomy of the hock, I am sorry to add, that I 
encountered another disappointment. Considering we have been 
emancipated from farriery upwards of half a century, I expected 
the pleasing and instructive perusal of the minute anatomy of the 
very many pairs of ligaments which enter the composition of the 
numerous small joints, independent of the master joint of the hock. 
I am also greatly at issue with my friend concerning a para- 
graph at page 123 of the March number of this Journal ; viz. 
“ Such a phenomenon as a spavin on the outer side of the hock is 
all but unheard of. I am not saying it never occurs; nor, indeed, 
am I quite sure it would be called a spavin if it did.” Although 
here again I differ with the writer, I should certainly have passed 
this over in silence, but that I am in the habit of urging students 
to avail themselves of all Mr. Percivall’s works, and am fearful 
this sentence alluded to might greatly mislead them. My ex- 
perience has for many a year convinced me that bone-spavin on 
