VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
1T7 
flammation, and then to give walking exercise, which will renew 
the inflammation, and then again to bleed to take it away, is a 
mode of treatment which he cannot understand ; and to exercise 
a horse with inflammation of the synovial membrane of the navi¬ 
cular joint is unsurgical and absurd. 
Mr. Turner had not been fully understood. If he gently 
exercised, or he might say slightly moved, a horse after four or 
five days’ confinement, although he might know that it would be 
then necessary to bleed again, he might be justified, from a regard 
to the general health of the animal. It is not safe for a horse to 
be kept in a confined stable for eight or nine days, for he would 
incur worse risks in other respects; and when the horse was 
taken out it was on the softest surface, and he was walked as 
gently as possible, and that for not more than half an hour. As 
to subduing the inflammation by the first bleeding, he could rarely 
flatter himself that he accomplished it. He has partially relieved 
the horse, but then comes the critical time; the hoof has been 
thoroughly suppled and relaxed by his emollient dressing; it 
may be moulded almost in any form ; and then he compels the 
horse to bring his weight immediately on his heels, that the coffin 
and navicular bones may be forced down while the hoof is thus 
relaxed; and if he does produce some return of inflammation, as 
perhaps he does, he relieves it by the second bleeding. He is con¬ 
vinced that the cure can consist only in the return of the bones to 
their natural situation. With regard to shortening the toe to 
E roduce obliquity of the foot, he does not understand this; 
e has not used the term—he has only spoken of transferring the 
weight from the fore to the back part of the foot, and thus forcing 
the bones downward; and if he does rasp at the toe, he likewise 
reduces the heels as low as he possibly can. 
Mr. Goodwin .—Still Mr. Turner has not justified the seem¬ 
ingly absurd and unsurgical practice of giving that exercise 
which will necessarily cause the return of the inflammation, and 
to abate which he is obliged to bleed a second time. 
Mr. Turner .—It is not so much to abate the inflammation 
caused by the exercise, as completely to remove the primary in¬ 
flammation, which the first bleeding might only have partially 
relieved. 
THURSDAY, FEB. 11, 1830. 
Mr. Goodwin read the latter part of his paper on the nature 
and treatment of Spavin; but the discussion reverted to Mr. Tur¬ 
ner’s theory and treatment of the Navicular Disease, when that 
gentleman read the following reply to Mr. Goodwin’s animadvert 
sions on him at the last meeting. 
VOL. III. b b 
