608 
TREATMENT OF N AV1CULARTHRITIS. 
moved — supposing this has not been done before — and the sole 
thinned afresh, the toe shortened, and the quarters rasped, I recom- 
mend that the horse should stand with his fore feet in clay. The 
simple plan I adopt is to make a clay bed in the horse’s stall, of 
sufficient breadth to render it impossible for him to place his fore 
feet in any situation out of it, and deep enough with clay to 
bury the hoofs of the feet, as they stand, in it. In this bed I 
have the animal kept standing, taking care that his head is tied 
short up, all day long ; while, at night, he isplaced in a littered stall 
to lie down, or else is turned into some confined yard or box. This 
is preferable to standing with the hoofs immerged in water, because 
from the conducting property of the clay, and the continual eva- 
poration going on from the various irregularities of the trampled 
clay bed, the feet experience so much more refrigeration. In this 
simple treatment I persevere until such time as heat has entirely 
left the external parts, and swelling likewise ; at least, the latter to 
that extent that it is from appearances likely to diminish : and thus 
have I known numberless cases of the kind described at the head 
of this paragraph either restored to soundness, or to that approx- 
imation to it that they have been considered sufficiently recovered 
to perform whatever has been required of them. 
About firing the coronet or pastern, I have nothing more to say 
than that it is an old practice, one that was had recourse to at a 
time when navicularthritis was noted as “ foot lameness,” without 
any thing being known of its seat or nature ; at the same time one 
which, from its counter-irritant operation, has no doubt been on many 
occasions followed by benefit ; not more benefit, however, than 
would have resulted from a blister, nor so much as generally is 
found consequent on blistering after blood-letting. Added to which, 
the scorings of the cautery, if made deep , tend to disorganize and 
destroy the secretory structure of the coronary body, and this entails 
a defective or irregular formation of horn. 
The Operation of Neurotomy, the dernier resort of the 
veterinary surgeon, being especially applicable to the unrelieved 
and incurable case of navicularthritis, shall be made the subject of 
a future paper. 
THE HEPATIC AFFERENT VESSEL. 
By Mr. John Jackson. 
If the spleen were a heart, i. e. an auricle and ventricle, in the 
former of which the mesenteric veins terminated, and if the splenic 
and portal vein and its ramifications in the liver were an artery 
