NEUROTOMY. 
65 
There have been many instances of horses that have been neuroto- 
mized on account of lameness continuing to go sound, even after 
the demonstrated return of feeling in consequence of the re-union 
of the nervous trunks, and the case of contraction in question may 
be classed’ among such permanent restorations. The annexed case 
affords a good example of the result of severing the nerves in con- 
traction 
In November 1828, a black mare, the property of Mr. Buss, of 
the George-inn, Bedford, went extremely lame from contraction in 
both fore feet. She could not, from pain, bear to stand up in 
her stable even sufficiently long to take her requisite food. Mr. 
Rickwood operated on her, confining his operation to one nerve in 
each leg. When the wounds were healed she was taken back 
to work, and proved as useful as any sound horse; continuing now 
to stand the same time as other horses, and doing her work as 
well. — Veterinarian, vol. iii, p. 213. 
The preceding Cases will suffice to shew, that, for lameness 
in the foot, coronet, or pastern, incurable or unrelievable by thera- 
peutic means ; for navicularthritis and its consequences ; for the 
effects of chronic coronitis and laminitis,. barring sunk soles ; for 
ossified cartilages, for ringbone, for contraction, the operation of 
neurotomy is especially applicable, and to such has been for the 
most part confined. Nor will those practitioners who regard their 
own credit, or that of the operation, feel desirous of extending 
much, for lameness at least, its sphere of operation. In no part of 
the body do we possess equal power over the nerves supplying 
sensation as we do over the — isolated or rather peninsulated — foot. 
Two nervous trunks, one running on either side of the pastern, 
form the sole communication between it and the brain, and these 
trunks take subcutaneous courses, wherein they are readily acces- 
sible to the knife. Most other parts and organs of the body derive 
their nerves from various surrounding sources, from below as well 
as from above them ; hence the difficulty, next to impossibility, 
indeed, in some instances, of cutting off nervous communication. 
This circumstance, taken into account with one other, viz. the 
frequently varied and extensive seat of the disease, will account 
for the failures that have attended attempts to restore spavined 
horses to soundness through neurotomy. 1 do not mean to say that 
such experiments have not at times succeeded, or that they may 
not succeed again, when the spavined case be proved to be isolated , 
to consist in uncomplicated exostosis ; though this last is a case 
wherein neurotomy is seldom called for. Furthermore, it must 
be remembered, that, in operating on nerves running to muscles as 
well as to other parts, we are dividing motor as well as sensitive 
fibres; and that thereby not sensation alone is destroyed, but motion 
likewise, leaving the part to which the divided nerve is running 
destitute of motion as well as sensation therefore it is that neu- 
VOL. XXI. K 
