316 NEURALGIA OF THE FEMORO-i OPI.ITEAL NERVE. 
CASE II. 
This also was an entire horse, twelve or fourteen years old. 
As in the former case, the disease was preceded by cold and 
wet weather : the symptoms were the same, except that they 
were not so violent, nor of so long duration. When he was quiet, 
the animal did not appear to suffer, and ate and drank well : it 
was only when he moved his hind limbs in the act of progression 
that the pains and convulsive contractions were perceived. 
If, however, the neuralgia was not so intense as in the pre- 
ceding subject, it lasted longer ; for it was not until the tenth 
day that it began to disappear suddenly in one leg, and in con- 
sequence perhaps of the weather suddenly becoming warmer, or 
spirit of turpentine having been given internally, and the cau- 
tery having been applied to the coxo-femoral portion of each limb. 
On the following day the spasms left the other leg, and the horse 
returned to his work. During the whole of the attack there was 
not any evacuation of urine, but, as soon as the animal began to 
get better, it was voided in great quantities. 
The cause of this last attack probably was some excessive 
fatigue which the horse had experienced, and the being exposed 
to cold when covered with sweat, and the custom of many ca- 
briolet proprietors (and this horse belonged to one of them) to 
turn out their horses into the wood during night. 
If I propose to designate this affection by the name of femoro- 
popliteal neuralgia, it is because I think that its seat is the great 
femoro-popliteal nerve (the great sciatic of some French anato- 
mists, perhaps here the nervous popliteus, or internal and larger 
division of the sciatic nerve), and, perhaps, also the smaller (exter- 
nal) popliteal. I confess, however, that I cannot base my theory 
on the symptoms which I have described ; and I do not deny 
that that theory is manifestly incomplete which is not supported 
by facts of pathological anatomy : nevertheless, if it be evident 
that the muscles which undergo these unusual spasmodic con- 
tractions are those on which the femoro-popliteal nerves are dis- 
tributed, it is not illogical to account for these spasms by sup- 
posing them to indicate a morbid affection of these nerves. As 
to the question which of these nerves is chiefly, or, perhaps, 
alone affected, I should say that it is the great femoro-popliteal, 
which sends branches to the extensors of the hock and flexors of 
the foot. If the other nerve had been similarly affected, there 
would have been powerful contraction of the pre-tibial, and the 
posterior femoral muscles, and the hock would not have been so 
extended, nor the foot so flexed. 
Rec. de Med . Vet., April 1836. 
