178 
1Extract0 from Sournalsf, dFovefgtt ana domestic* 
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> ■ ON NEUROTOMY. 
WE are naturally anxious to know the opinions of our neigh¬ 
bours on the few improvements in the veterinary art which 
we can justly call our own. M. Berger, (in the February Num¬ 
ber of the Journal Pratique/’) has spoken of the navicular 
disease, and the operation of neurotomy : the true theory of the 
former discovered by Mr. Turner; the latter, revived and im¬ 
proved, and established by Mr. Sewell. Professor Dupuy has 
made some valuable remarks on this paper, and it will not, per¬ 
haps, be displeasing to our readers to possess the substance 
of the original and the commentary. • • 
M. Berger tells us that those lamenesses in the fore feet, the 
situation and the cause of which often escape the most diligent 
research, and which for the most part resist all the means that 
have been tried in France for their removal, are now frequently 
cured by the English veterinarians, by a section of the plantar 
nerve. 
Mr. J. Turner, of Croyden, had proved by numerous dissec¬ 
tions of the' horse’s foot, that in more than three cases out 
of four, where lameness of the anterior extremities occurred 
without apparent cause, it resulted from a lesion of some of the 
sensible parts contained within the hoof, and more particularly 
at the articulation of the two last phalanges over the navicular 
bone, or where the flexor tendon plays over the surface of this 
bone. 
Although this disease had been previously noticed by Lafosse 
and others, it had not sufficiently attracted the notice of the 
profession until Mr. Turner developed its situation, nature, and 
cause. This species of lameness he thinks first suggested to Mr. 
Sewell the practice of neurotomy, and not merely the division 
of the nerve, but the excision of a portion of it, and which has 
been attended by the happiest results. 
The knowledge of this important operation soon reached the 
French schools. In 1807, Heimann, a horse-dealer, practised it 
