438 
DIFFERENT METHODS OF CASTRATION. 
direction, performed on a young horse with great success, in the 
same way. 
In all the above-mentioned cases, little or no swelling took 
place; and so little disturbance, that not one of them, to my know¬ 
ledge, refused his food or lost condition. 
Having related the successful ones, I proceed to mention, that an 
old practitioner, a friend of mine, operated in the same way, and lost 
his patient speedily; but I know not the particulars of the case, though 
I believe it must be admitted, that, at the time, there were a great 
many horses dying from other causes, and that, in fact, it was a 
very unhealthy time amongst them. About the same period, I 
castrated an aged horse for Mr. Elmore, in this method. Three 
weeks after the operation, when the horse was, as I considered, 
out of my care, I was called to attend him, and found him labour¬ 
ing under symptoms of violent inflammation, threatening gangrene, 
with great swelling about the scrotum and cord, extending all along 
the abdomen of one side, and to the stifle, which all my efforts 
proved unavailing to arrest the progress pf, and he died. I sub¬ 
sequently found that this horse had been put into harness 
and sold, and had also had an attack of inflammation of the 
lungs, before the period of these symptoms arrived; that he had 
been bled twice by one of the grooms, and was considered getting 
better of his cold when attacked in the way I have described. 
From these circumstances having intervened in this case, I can 
draw no inference about the operation. 
The last time I operated was on a valuable race horse, six 
years old, and, from some circumstances, the preparation the 
horse got was quite insufficient to render him fit to undergo it. 
The plethoric habit of a race horse, that has been living upon hard 
meat, and galloping exercise, for four years, is not to be reduced, 
or sufficiently lowered, by one or two doses of physic and a fort¬ 
night’s abstemious diet, to render the operation wholly without 
danger. This horse had been physicked, but his muscles were 
still in all their vigour, and his habit as inflammatory as every 
horse’s under similar circumstances must be. The horse was a 
valuable one: I adopted the .close method, and the operation I 
performed with eveiy care. My patient had been living on mashes 
only for three days previous. After the operation, he was walked 
about for two hours, and then put into a loose place, with a cradle 
on, to prevent his getting his teeth to the clams: he expressed no 
pain, but ate his mashes, and was walked again the same even¬ 
ing (Monday). He was, to appearance, perfectly well on Tues¬ 
day. Towards Wednesday, however, he evinced some pain, by 
looking back at his flanks, which I should not so much have re- 
