2 
FIRING FOR SPAVIN. 
later stages, in consequence of a process of absorption, a disap- 
pearance of all this increased deposit, proceeding to an abatement 
or removal of parts in a state of enlargement from disease, and to 
a shrunk, contracted, braced state of the parts in health ; and 
withal, ending in permanently diminished sensibility, as well as 
vascularity. In the course of these changes is brought about — 
in a manner we are not permitted to learn — such a revolution in 
the morbid orgasm of the fired part as, in the majority of cases, 
eventually ends in the return of normal structure and function, 
or in such changes as possess sufficient approximation thereto to 
enable the animal to use the part or parts, formerly incapacitated 
from disease, with that freedom which passes under ordinary ob- 
servation for a condition of soundness. 
Both in first impressions and in subsequent effects, blisters and 
setons fall short of the actual cautery ; added to which, the latter 
in its operation from first to last is found to possess a power of 
working good in the restoration of parts much injured or altered 
by disease which the former under no circumstances whatever 
manifest. We have no restorer equivalent to the hot iron — no- 
thing of equal power to do good or to do harm. With it, with 
caution, humanity, and judgment, the veterinary surgeon may, 
without fear of incurring the reproach of the philanthropist or 
lover of his horse, work a great amount of good ; without such 
judgment and caution, he will be deservedly set down as one who, 
through ignorance or inconsideration, has put his unfortunate pa- 
tient to cruel, and wanton, and uncalled-for torture. 
The after-treatment of the fired Parts used in former 
days to be “ left to Nature.” After standing tied up in his stall 
for two or three or four days and nights, the custom was to besmear 
his fired parts with train-oil, or grease of some description, and 
then to turn the horse into a loose, box, or else at once to turn him 
out into some field or paddock or straw-yard : thus were the scores 
made by the red-hot iron suffered, beneath a coating of oil or 
grease, to scab and fester, and harbour matter under the eschars, 
which ever and anon fell off, or else got knocked or rubbed off, 
exposing raw bloody surfaces of cutis, from the aspect of which it 
was evident enough what mischief had been all the while brooding 
amidst such a medley of grease and scab and matter and filth. 
And such mischief becomes of a nature not to be repaired. The 
true skin — the cutis vera — is seen becoming ulcerated wherever 
purulent matter is lodging upon it; the consequence of which 
is, that the bulbs or roots of the hair are all the while suffering 
destruction, so that when the chasms made by ulceration come to 
be healed up, such places are found unprovided with hair : the 
bulbs or roots from which the hairs spring never becoming rege- 
