NEUROTOMY. 
669 
whether the nutritive and secretory functions of the foot, deprived 
of nervous power, would proceed as before ; and, further, what dif- 
ference neurotomy might make in the animal’s action or tread upon 
the ground. Moorcroft had observed that, under the loss of nervous 
energy, “ the repairing powers of the part were not injured, so far 
as they depended upon the action of the bloodvessels and sub- 
sequent experience has confirmed this observation. Inflammation 
appears to be the same process in a senseless as it is in a sensitive 
foot, and the secretion of horn goes on as well in one as in 
the other; the grand and important difference between the two 
being, that, supposing the neurotomized foot to receive a prick or 
bruise, and inflammation and suppuration to follow, matter may 
collect and burrow underneath the sole or frog, or other part, and 
the horse, incapable of feeling any hurt in his foot, can of course 
give no intimation of mischief, by shewing pain or lameness, to 
his groom or master ; and consequently, unless the latter should 
detect the evil himself, suppuration may proceed to that extent to 
cause the hoof to separate and be cast off the foot : a catastrophe 
which has happened more than once, and one that has been brought 
forward as a fearful argument against the practice of neurotomy. 
A neurotomized horse may receive a stab in being shod from a nail 
taking a wrong direction, or he may pick up a nail on the road, 
and no intimation whatever of injury be given, unless it happen by 
his farrier or groom to be discovered. Such accidents, however, are 
not of every-day occurrence, neither are they, in the hands of ex- 
pert farriers and careful grooms, likely to happen without their 
knowledge, and therefore have no right to be regarded in the 
light of arguments against neurotomy further than that suchhazard, 
remote though it be, tends to the diminution of such a horse’s 
value in the market. 
• The operation of neurotomy has certainly taught us important 
uses of nerves to the foot. By imparting sensation to the organ 
they become at once its safeguards in health and (if I may be 
allowed the expression) its nurses in disease : they inform the 
animal when his foot is hurt, and they warn him, through the pain 
he feels, that the injury, or the inflammation the consequence of it, 
will be aggravated by pressure upon it or use of it ; and therefore 
it is that he “ favours” the ailing foot in action, and “ points” 
with it while at rest, and so in effect lays it up. This the neuro- 
# tomized horse, feeling no pain, finds no occasion for doing ; and the 
result may, through inattention, possibly be such as l have before 
stated, viz. suppuration of the entire foot, shedding of the hoof, and 
even, from subsequent irritation in other parts, in the end, death 
itself. 
