94 ON CLIPPING THE HORSE, AND THE EFFECT 
I have never seen the disease appear a second time in the same 
animal. 
If, Sir, these desultory remarks are of any service toward the 
end you have in view, it will give me great pleasure. 
I am, &c. 
ON CLIPPING THE HORSE, AND THE EFFECT OF 
OPIUM AND HYDROCYANIC ACID. 
By Mr. C. SNEWING, VS., Rugby. 
This subject, to which the attention of the profession has lately 
been called, is one in which the tyro may embark with equal 
chance of success with his more experienced contemporary; for 
the effects produced by the removal of the hairy covering to the 
body are, doubtless, in accordance with “ those thousand secret 
operations that are constantly going on in the animal frame 
“ therefore,” in the language of Dr. Southwood Smith, “ with what- 
ever diligence we investigate these operations, the great problem 
remains, and probably ever will remain, unresolved : still it is both 
a pleasurable and a profitable labour to follow Nature in her path, 
to the extreme point to which it is possible to trace her footsteps ; 
for the phenomena themselves are often in the highest degree curi- 
ous and interesting, while their order and relation can seldom be 
so considered as to be understood without the suggestion of practi- 
cal applications of great and permanent usefulness.” 
I do hope that there will be many who will not “ remain content 
with the acceptance of this boon, without assiduously applying 
themselves to the philosophy of the thing — the modus operandi.” 
I, for one, do even go further than Mr. Turner, and not only affirm 
that it is “ a tonic inferior to none at present known in the whole 
range of our pharmacopoeia,” but that even his deep cautery le- 
sions, which he draws so freely on the ancles of his patients, are 
not to the part a greater bracer than this is to the whole body. 
An inquiry into the cause of this involves a question no less 
deep in interest than obscurity, and which will not admit of hasty 
solution. Our “ well-read employer” must patiently wait for an 
answer, until the subject receives the collected opinions of many, the 
result of their observation, and an extended series of experiments. 
That there is a subtle, and, when undisturbed, a latent sub- 
stance pervading all material bodies, which is capable of exciting 
or destroying life in an instant, not only in the lower animals but 
