606 
TREATMENT OF NAVICULARTHR1TIS. 
rather wait a few days before the second application was made. 
The sponging operation should be carefully performed every morn- 
ing, smoothing down the hair in so doing : at the same time it is a 
wise precaution to take, to smear the heel with grease, lest any of 
the blister or discharge should escape into it. About ten days or a 
fortnight after the application of the blister, under attentive manage- 
ment, the sweated parts will in general have become sufficiently soft 
and pliant again to warrant the horse being seen out in a short 
gentle trot. Should there remain, however, any scurfiness about 
the pastern or coronet, his action will necessarily be stiff in those 
parts, and on that account perhaps will he still shew lameness, sup- 
posing he does not do so from his continuing unrelieved by the 
remedies that have been employed. Providing he go sound, or so 
much better that he is evidently on the road of improvement, let 
him remain, as before, at rest in his stall for another week, and 
then be again trotted out for trial ; a period when, his progress to- 
wards amendment being satisfactory, he may be turned into a loose 
box, his continuance in which must depend entirely on circum- 
stances. Should his services be peremptorily demanded, of course 
he must return to work ; though the longer he is kept out of work 
the greater will be the chance for him to stand sound when he comes 
to be put to it. 
In a case wherein such treatment as this —intermediate as it is 
in intensity and length of time occupied between the mildest and 
severest forms of treatment — fails to afford the expected relief, or 
in a case wherein either from consideration of its nature, or from 
its being a relapse, or other circumstances, it is resolved fro.m the 
first to place the lame horse under that course of treatment which 
presents the surest prospects of ultimate success, sufficient length 
of time being granted by his owner to put it into effective execu- 
tion, the plan to be adopted — which I believe, at all hands, is 
reckoned the most effectual — is as follows : — 
When there is plain evidence to shew, or even reason to sus- 
pect, that inflammation continues unabated in the navicular joint, 
take blood, not once only, but twice, from the toe of the foot, nay ! 
thrice, if required, which is rarely the case, to the amount, under 
ordinary circumstances, of six or eight pints each time; and as 
soon as convenient after the last bleeding, i. e., as soon as the 
wound made by the lancet is sufficiently healed to bear having a 
tip nailed upon the hoof*, have the coronet and pastern, and fetlock 
as well t closely trimmed or rather shorn of their hair, and over the 
* It may not be requisite or even advisable in a strong-horned foot to put 
on any shoe : in a brittle or weak-crusted foot a tip prevents fracture of the 
hoof. 
