424 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
gentleman of the Four-in-hand Club had a horse exceedingly 
lame. It was subjected to the operation of neurotomy. It was kept 
down a full hour, and a portion of the nerve was supposed to be 
excised from both legs, and on both sides. The lameness was 
not in the slightest degree removed : the gentleman was in great 
wrath, and I was sent for. A small piece — two or three lines — 
of the nerve had been taken away from one leg. I excised a 
larger piece on that side, and completed the operation on the 
other side, and on the other leg. The horse got up sound, and 
is sound at the present day. Cases like these would be very 
serious matters to you at the commencement of your professional 
career, and would do you irreparable injury; therefore in the 
dissecting-room make yourselves well acquainted with the surgical 
anatomy of this operation, and perform the operation again and 
again on the dead subject. 
The Operation on the Plantar Nerve . — There is very little more 
difficulty in discovering the precise situation of the nerve if you 
operate below the fetlock, for it preserves the same relative 
situation with respect to the artery and the vein, but it is of 
smaller bulk, and somewhat more deeply seated. And here, if 
you are good anatomists, you might vary the situation of the 
incision, if the seat of disease were plain, and it were as plain that 
no other part of the foot was affected. You might excise a por- 
tion of the branch from the metacarpal if the grievance was 
plainly on the fore part of the pastern or the coronet — or, taking 
the plantar nerve, you might divide the branch which goes to the 
lateral cartilage in manifest ossification of that part. M. Dupuy 
had two draught horses with ringbone, or what he terms “ a 
uniform hard and bony tumour over the anterior portion of the 
small pastern.” He excised half an inch from each of the 
anterior digitated branches on the pastern. The operation was 
attended by complete success. The animals on whom the 
cautery and the blister had been tried in vain ceased to go lame, 
and have ever since been capable of full work. That the ope- 
ration is susceptible of much improvement, there can be no doubt; 
but he ought to be a good anatomist, and to have a thorough 
knowledge of the diseases of the foot, and their relations and 
consequences, who presumes to refine much on the present 
recognized plan, namely, to excise a portion either of the meta- 
carpal or the plantar trunk, and the former much oftener than 
the latter. But I am travelling somewhat too fast : we are yet 
hardly prepared for these considerations. 
Effect of the Excision of the Nerve . — We have described the 
spinal nerves as being of a compound nature, conveying the 
power of sensation and of voluntary motion ; and when one of 
