64 
OTHER REMEDIES FOR SPAVIN. 
mitting, is calculated, give it time enough, to work a great amount 
of good. A blister, prompt and for a time severe in its operation, 
will probably effect some immediate relief, but that relief is not 
found to be of the enduring or withstanding character of that which 
is so much more slowly brought about by the seton. So far there 
certainly is a sort of appositeness, as a remedy, of seton to spavin ; 
but that, beyond this, to imagine it possesses any specific power, 
is, I repeat, absurd. 
Ordinarily, but one seton, that being a broad one, is passed for 
spavin ; the course given to it being from above, directly across 
the tumour, to below it. Another seton may be advantageously 
passed, taking a similar course, on the outer side of the hock ; and 
this constitutes my ordinary practice. For the first three or four 
days after it is passed, the seton should not be moved — not drawn 
up and down, indeed, until such time as sufficient inflammation is 
aroused in the parts contiguous to it, the object being to promote 
all the counter-irritation and counter-issue possible. And until the 
desired inflammation and swelling be manifested — the better still 
if it pervade the limb — the patient should be kept standing up in 
his stall ; afterwards, a loose box is the preferable situation for 
him. When we find we have succeeded in eliciting a sufficient 
issue of laudable pus, we must take care that the seton be moved 
sufficiently often to prevent the lodgment of the matter, and the 
consequent formation of small abscesses or pouches underneath the 
skin; since the effect of such detention will be, ulceration of some 
part of the canal of the seton, and consequent premature casting off 
or liberation of the tape. In fact, this is one of Nature’s methods 
of getting rid of the offensive and irritating tape or thread, or what- 
ever else the seton may consist of ; the other being, ulceration 
gradually going on in either aperture of the seton, and especially in 
the upper one, at the part over which the knotted end of the tape 
usually depends : it being curious enough to observe how ulceration 
progresses at the place from the pressure of the tape, while granu- 
lation keeps repairing the aperture above the tape ; until at length 
the seton, growing gradually shorter and shorter in its canal, is 
completely cast off by unassisted natural procedure. 
I have limited my recommendation of seton to the case of ex- 
ternal or periosteal spavin. There is one stage, however, of 
articular spavin in which the seton not infrequently proves of 
service, and of service even after firing appears to have failed. The 
patient, we will say, has been properly fired, has had the requisite 
period of repose or turning out, his fired parts have healed and 
cicatrized, and yet he proves, shortly after return to work, if not 
before, “ as lame as ever.” Firing the bald blemished parts again 
is out of the question. What then is to be done ? I say, under 
