THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XXI, 
No. 242. 
FEBRUARY 1848. 
Third Series, 
No. 2. 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S. and V.S. 
[Continued from vol. xx, p. 673.] 
Neurotomy. 
HAVING shewn what success has attended the performance of 
neurotomy under favouring, or, to speak more correctly, under 
fitting and proper circumstances, I should be doing injustice to my 
reader by setting the operation before him in a light falsely daz- 
zling, were I to withhold from him the recital of occurrences which 
from their aspect and termination have seemed to warrant others 
in bringing them forward as so many failures, and facts upon 
which arguments might be securely grounded against neurotomy. 
There ig no more sure way, in the end, of bringing any new 
remedy or operation into discredit than that of setting forth all its 
virtues and good qualities to the entire exclusion of its bad ones : 
in the rong run, failures will be certain to make themselves known, 
and the result of such disclosures is likely to be, that what at first 
was thought and said to be perfection itself, is now declared to be 
good for nothing, or absolutely bad perhaps ; it being in the one 
instance as much unfairly decried as it was in the other unduly 
extolled. Such has been the case with neurotomy. Its promoters 
and abetters, some influenced by fame, others by gain, set it forth 
at the outset in brilliant and shadeless colours, and thus succeeded 
in raising it to a great height in public estimation-; so that, when 
reverses did come, its fall proved all the greater. Still had it 
sufficient buoyancy, sufficient real merit, to recover from such 
sweeping condemnation ; and now, once more, is it restored by all 
reflecting veterinarians to that place in their catalogue of remedies 
VOL. XXI. I 
