TREATMENT OF NAVICULARTHRITIS. 
607 
entire surface apply a strong blister ; the horse being fastened up 
in his stall afterwards, so as not to be able to lie down, according 
to the usual mode of securing blistered horses. After standing for 
three or four or five days in his stall, according as more or less 
swelling of the leg ensues, the blistered parts may be well oiled, 
and the patient may be turned into a loose box ; but I would not 
have this box a large one, because in his present condition quietude 
is much to be preferred to moving about. Such a blister will cause 
the cuticle, and with it the hair, to come off, and the horse will 
certainly not have his leg restored to be in a condition for work 
under a month or six weeks, the blood-letting and blistering alto- 
gether occupying about a couple of months. And unless such time 
be given up for the treatment of the case, the veterinarian had 
much better, for his own credit’s sake, be without the case. In- 
deed, in many cases, some two or three weeks more will be found 
desirable either for complete'Yecovery from the effects of the blister, 
or for the more perfect subsidence of the lameness. 
But supposing, after all this, that the lameness continues, if not 
to the same degree, still in too palpable a degree to admit of the 
animal being re-taken to work, what at this stage is to be done 1 — 
what more can be put in practice for the relief of the case ! 
Having recourse to blood-letting and blistering again would be inju- 
dicious, there being most probably nothing to call for it. Whatever 
inflammation existed at first has most likely by this time departed 
altogether from the navicular joint; or, if it has not wholly ceased, 
has subsided into a lingering chronic action which hardly calls for, 
or is likely to be very little benefited by, repetition of blood-letting. 
There may be — indeed, probably there will be — some heat and 
tumefaction remaining about the pastern and coronet; but this is 
most likely the effect of the blister, and therefore need not be 
heeded further than as some guide to us concerning our future 
treatment of the case. 
In this stage of an unrelieved or uncured case I have frequently 
tried the frog seton ; though hardly ever, I may add, with any such 
result as has satisfied me of any decidedly beneficial operation it 
has had: on The contrary, the horse has often gone as lame after 
the withdrawal of the seton as he did before : I have therefore 
discontinued using the frog seton in navicularthritis. The prac- 
tice I now adopt in the case before us is rather of an assuasive 
than a counter-irritant character. It consists simply in employ- 
ment of refrigeration and rest. This, whilst it cools the exter- 
nal parts, and robs them of any heat or inflammatory action they 
may still retain, abstracts any chronic inflammation that may 
linger about the parts within, at the same time that it softens 
and supples the hoof. Having had the tip on the lame foot re- 
