CAUTERY AND SETON. 
597 
neas for this horse, scored and disfigured as he was. Hence, then, 
did I imbibe the notion, that, where the mischief was serious, 
nothing short of this deep and broad firing was to be depended 
upon ; and I am ready to admit, that the only instance in which 
I had recourse to it, which was in the case of a very bad leg, 
operated upon by Mr. Turner, the elder, at Croydon, the cure 
was complete. 
There was another very celebrated sportsman in Warwickshire, 
who, although he did not himself operate on his horses, had, 
from living much with Mr. Lockley, so far imbibed his ideas of 
the inutility of half measures in operative surgery, that some of 
his horses’ legs were sadly disfigured by the iron. I remember 
one especial instance in a thorough-bred hunter of his, called 
Toby. He was afflicted with a severe thorough-pin, which ren- 
dered him useless. Having had him deeply fired by Shepherd, 
of Stratford-on-Avon (not a veterinary surgeon, but an excellent 
operator), he immediately applied a blister, so strongly impreg- 
nated with corrosive sublimate as to have caused sloughings so 
great as to eradicate all traces of the iron, and to leave a bald 
place, as smooth as the palm of a man’s hand. The cure, how- 
ever, was complete, and he rode the horse many years afterwards. 
Corrosive sublimate was much used for strains, as well as spavins, 
&c. in my younger days, and although it blemished by destroying 
the hair, was found to be effective. 
Oh that so noble an animal as the horse could be made avail- 
able to all the purposes required of him, and which will, from 
this time forth be required of him, without putting him to the 
torture requisite to cure him of those disorders and accidents 
which man, not he himself, subjects him to ! As this, however, 
is not on the cards, let us look dispassionately into the nature 
and effects of the remedies employed, and, when operative, the 
relative amount of torture that they produce. 
Although my reading has informed me that the application of 
the actual cautery, or red-hot iron, has been the practice of sur- 
geons to the human race in many parts of the world, and espe- 
cially among the Japanese, whose whole art of physic once lay 
in the choice of places proper to be burnt; still I think the 
firmest compound of blood, bone, and nerve, in the shape of an 
intelligent human being, if bound hand and foot, and seeing a 
man approach him with a red-hot iron in his hand, about to 
apply it to his flesh, would utter such piercing cries as might 
shake the nerves and abash the confidence of the most practised 
operator in the country. Such, however, is the situation of the 
horse when about to undergo this operation, with only this dif- 
ference. Inasmuch as Providence “tempers the winds to the 
VOL. X. 4 H 
