364 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
to believe are going on in the parts deranged or diseased, towards 
the righting or restoring of the same. 
The Actual Cautery is recommended by Professor De 
Nanzio, of Naples, to be used after the same manner for shoulder 
lameness as he has found it so effectual in hip-joint lameness (see 
VETERINARIAN for 1837), which consists in making incisions 
through the muscular and cellular tissue, after flaps of skin have 
been dissected back, down to the diseased joint, to the immediate 
coverings of which a budding iron, moderately heated, is to be 
three or four times leniently applied. The flaps of skin are then 
to be returned into their places, and simple or no dressings whatever 
used to the wound. 
The Potential Cautery has likewise met with continental 
advocacy. In the “ Transactions of the Royal Veterinary School 
at Lyons for the Year 1840-1,” published in The Veterinarian 
for 1842, we are informed that — “ Lameness of the scapulo-hume- 
ral and coxo-femoral articulations have in numerous cases been 
satisfactorily treated with chemical caustics. Fifty-three horses 
have been submitted to the treatment, thirty-five for shoulder lame- 
ness, and eighteen for hip-joint lameness. All have been cured 
save three, out of which two had been a long time lame, and one 
whose case was out of the ordinary character. Either the bi- 
chloride of mercury or the arsenious acid may be used ; though 
decided preference is given to the former. A small piece, weighing 
gr. ij, is introduced underneath the skin at the point of the articula- 
tion, and suffered to remain there eight-and-forty hours; from which 
neither the tumefaction that may follow, nor the absorption of the 
salt, nor the state of the wound, need cause any alarm. One un- 
toward result on occasions takes place. The purulent matter gene- 
rated insinuates itself underneath the skin, and causes a partial 
detachment of it from the tissues beneath. The insertion of a tent 
or seton, however, inlo the dependent pouch will speedily remedy 
all. Some persons use the sulphate of copper; but this is far less 
effective than the mercury. And the arsenic is more objectionable 
still, from its uniformly occasioning a good deal of tumefaction. 
Now and then it has produced poisonous effects. 
Setons — which are no more than modern and for some cases 
improved forms of the old tents , plugs, and rowels — are by some 
practitioners employed in the place of blisters. To blisters, how- 
ever, they are decidedly inferior both in point of activity and 
efficacy. If used at all, they might be made trial of in cases that 
had become chronic, and seemed to require something in the shape 
of a perpetual issue. After all, they form* but a link in the long 
chain of counter-irritants ; and are from their nature calculated 
