SUBCUT AN EOUS PERIOSTEOTOMY. 
17 
bone : it had been blistered several times, but was not at all 
relieved, being at this time exceedingly lame. The operation 
was performed as in the former case, and a seton left in, which 
remained in one week. In this case, as well as in the other, 
the periosteum was divided in several places. After the seton 
was taken out, the splent was bathed with similar lotions as in 
the former case. In a month from the operation the pony was 
sound, and is so at the present moment ; the absorption of the 
splent still proceeding. 
I have now, I think, by the statement of these two facts, made 
my original position good, — that it is in the cure of splents a 
safe operation. Anatomy as well as practice demonstrates that 
it will remove lameness, both of recent and older date. The 
cases speak for themselves : the first was a recent case ; the 
second of older date, and had undergone the trial of two or three 
blisterings. That it will to a certain extent produce absorption, 
the cases amply proved : in one the splents became scarcely 
perceivable, in the other very much diminished. 
And is not, I ask, this valuable addition to veterinary surgery, 
which holds forth such perfect success, more humane, and de- 
cidedly to be preferred to the actual cautery, the blister, or the 
seton? Do you not by the operation lay the axe to the root of 
the tree ; relieve tension by the division of the periosteum ; pro- 
duce counter-irritation by the knife and the seton ; and after- 
wards abate the inflammation thus raised in the part, and pro- 
mote absorption, by the use of cooling astringent lotions? Such 
means producing such effects cannot but promote a cure. 
The same means that produce a cure in one exostosis will most 
certainly produce a cure in another, where a knowledge of ana- 
tomy teaches that it may be performed with perfect safety. 
I conclude this letter (which has had for its object the support, 
by facts, of the truth of Professor Sewell’s valuable paper) w ith 
a translation of a celebrated saying of Cicero, not out of place 
here, I hope, and to the truth of which I trust every contributor 
to your Journal is a living witness : — 
“ Before all other things man is distinguished by his pursuits 
and investigation of truth : and hence, when free from needful 
business and cares, we delight to see, to hear, and to communi- 
cate, and consider a knowledge of many admirable and abstruse 
things necessary to the good conduct and happiness of our lives; 
whence it is clear, that whatsoever is true, simple, and direct, the 
same is most congenial to our nature as men. Closely allied 
with this earnest longing to see and know the truth, is a kind of 
dignified and princely sentiment, which forbids a mind naturally 
well constituted to submit its faculties to any but those who an- 
VOL. IX. I) 
