TREATMENT OF NAVICULARTHR1TIS. 
603 
recent , will be found advisable : at the same time I wish it to be 
distinctly understood, that, in a case in which the proprietor of the 
lame horse is willing to afford the requisite time, and the horse, 
after being restored to soundness, is to be expected to return to 
severe work, there carnbe no question about the general inadequacy 
of this mild treatment to answer such an end. 
The simple plan of treatment I adopt in a case of navicularthritic 
lameness which has but just commenced, is to have the shoe taken 
off the lame foot, to have the sole of the foot pared out, and the 
crust rasped round, and afterwards to have foot and leg immersed 
in a warm bath, the immersion being succeeded by the envelopment 
of the lame foot in an ample hot poultice of bran and linseed meal. 
The poultice will require renewal every night, as well as t every 
morning after the warm bath. And while this emollient treatment 
is soothing and relieving the foot, I commonly exhibit a brisk pur- 
gative. The purge will occupy the animal three days, and the day 
he is admitted or seen for the first time reckoning for the fourth, 
three days more will complete the week, at the expiration of which 
time he may have his shoe tacked on, and be seen out. By such 
simple treatment, and a week’s repose, many such cases have I 
seen restored to soundness; but there must be taken into this 
account the important circumstance of these cases coming to me on 
the very day , I might almost say on the very hour, of their com- 
mencement. Such prompt application cannot be looked for in 
private practice, and therefore it is that the nature of the case 
becomes materially altered. Still, in many instances when late 
application has been made, supposing the case to be a first attack, 
and it be highly desirable, as I said before, to have the horse made 
sound without blemish, the emollient plan may be tried : it may 
very likely fail, but it will hardly put the animal’s lame foot in a 
worse condition for more surely effective treatment than it was 
formerly in, and, after all, but a week or so will be lost. 
The permanently restorative Treatment consists in 
topical blood-letting and blistering . 
Blood-letting is practicable, so as to have a topical or local 
effect, either from the foot itself or from some bloodvessel directly 
supplying blood to it, or returning blood from it. The pastern 
arteries and veins have been opened with this view; puncture of the 
former, however, has been found to be attended with inconvenience 
and even danger, while the latter have yielded too spare and uncer- 
tain a stream of blood for the evacuation to be such as was likely 
to be followed by any or much beneficial result. The part from 
which blood is usually drawn, and with more convenience and 
effect, perhaps, than from any other, is the toe of the foot , or, rather, 
the anterior border of the horny sole, whereabouts is to be found 
