664 
1’llUNG FOR SPAVIN. 
though but “ an inch in length.” I can well remember that my 
father used his firing-irons with great boldness; and my impres- 
sion is, that at that day, thirty or forty years ago, such was the 
general practice of firing. At the time, however, that setons 
came so much into vogue, at the London Veterinary College in 
particular, and after the introduction of periosteotomy by Professor 
Sewell, firing became much decried as a cruel and unnecessary 
operation, it being alleged that setons were fit and efficient sub- 
stitutes for it. In these attempts to discard the red-hot iron out 
of the veterinary surgery — as it had already been cast out of 
human practice — there w r as manifest a most praiseworthy spirit of 
philanthropy, descending from the man upon the brute, and alight- 
ing upon that brute which we most deservedly hold in especial 
regard : yet was there one paramount consideration — one insur- 
mountable objection to turning the cautery out of doors — neither 
medicine nor instrument was left in our hands which, in certain 
cases , could supply its place ; and, therefore, had we persisted 
in relinquishing the use of the hot iron, we must have confessed 
ourselves unable to work cures in many inveterate and all-but- 
hopeless cases which, with its aid, we now successfully undertake. 
But, said another class of veterinarians — among whom, 1 am not 
ashamed to confess, I, in former days, stood myself — “ cannot we 
effect all we desire or require by 
Superficial Firing?” by which is generally meant, firing that 
does not penetrate the skin — -the cutis vera. It was thought that — 
for the sake of the sufferer — this sort of compromise might be made. 
Those veterinarians, however, whose practice lay the most in hunt- 
ing and racing counties, and who had not only spavins and curbs 
to contend with, but had frightful cases of what is called “ broken 
down” to mend or restore, found from experience that, with them, 
nothing would suffice short of the deep cautery lesion ; and the 
first person to remind such practitioners as might have been led 
astray by the practice of setoning, & c., or the error of supposing 
that deep firing could be dispensed with, was Mr. James Turner. 
So long ago as the year 1830, “ An INQUIRY INTO THE CIRCUM- 
STANCES WHICH HAVE BROUGHT INTO DISREPUTE THE OPERA- 
TION OF FIRING FOR LAMENESSES OF HORSES, WITH AN IM- 
PROVED METHOD, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ITS ADMISSION INTO 
HUMAN SURGERY,” was sent by Mr. Turner to The Lancet , and 
from that journal copied into The VETERINARIAN. In this “ in- 
quiry,” after stating that “ experience gained by a long practice in 
a hunting country notorious for its hills and flints incapacitating 
the legs of horses” — “ his desire is to ‘ see the phoenix rise from 
its dying ashes’” — which I interpret to be the restoration of the 
old or deep method of firing — he informs us, “ my practice in 
