NEUROTOMY. 59 
were utterly useless, saved many lives from slaughter, and obtained 
for neurotomy a good name within his circle of practice. 
A plain and safe argument wherewith to meet the objections to 
neurotomy is, simply to ask the question — what the animal is 
worth, or to what useful purpose he can be put, who happens to 
be the subject of such an operation. If the horse can be shewn 
to be still serviceable and valuable, then is he not a legitimate 
subject for the operation. The rule of procedure I laid down 
when treating on neurotomy in my “ Lectures on the Veterinary 
Art,” so long ago as 1823, was to operate on no other but the 
incurably lame horse ; and whenever this has been attended to, 
not only has success been the most brilliant, but indemnification 
from blame or reproach has been assured. 
When first neurotomy was proclaimed as a “ cure” for certain 
descriptions of lameness which all other remedies had failed to 
remove, persons having lame horses, eager to have them restored 
to soundness, flocked around veterinary surgeons to have them 
“ unnerved ;” such appearing to them no more than an ordinary 
remedy for an ordinary case. By this the veterinary practitioner 
was placed in a novel and trying situation. If he refused to ope- 
rate, he probably lost a customer ; and if he did so, he felt that he 
was performing an operation of magnitude and risk in a case where- 
in milder and safer means would probably prove more efficacious. 
One veterinary surgeon in our great metropolis, during the season 
of neuroto-mania, operated on some hundreds of horses, and made 
thereby somewhere about as many pounds sterling; and the result 
has been, that, in quarters where “ nerving” and “ unnerving” 
were phrases constantly in horse-people’s mouths, the operation 
is now hardly ever heard of, neurotomy having been set down in 
their mi$ds as a lamentable failure. And certainly, for the rough 
work, coach and cab and omnibus horses have to go through, for 
farmers’ work, for all business, in fine, wherein so little attention 
is or can be paid to the feet and legs of horses, that so long as they 
are able to go at all go they must, neurotomy is altogether unsuited, 
and from them has been very properly discarded. In situations, 
however, where scrupulous attention can be given to feet and legs, 
and where work is not forced or even called for at times that re- 
pose may be advisable, neurotomy judiciously practised has proved 
of very great service in more points of view than the principal one 
of lameness. For this reason it is to be regretted that it has found 
so many enemies ; though less surprise is excited by this so long 
as those inimical to it are out of the profession. When men in the 
veterinary profession set themselves up in hostility against it, we 
feel anxious to learn the reason of their opposition; and therefore it 
is that I am now about to make a quotation from a veterinarian of 
