504 
AN INQUIRY 
INTO THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HAVE BROUGHT INTO DISREPUTE 
THE OPERATION OF 
FIRING FOR LAMENESSES OF HORSES, 
WITH AN IMPROVED METHOD, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ITS ADMISSION INTO 
HUMAN SURGERY. 
By Mr. James Turner, Veterinary Surgeon . 
[From the Lancet, Aug. 21, 1830.] 
“ Monstrous presumption I expect, will be the exclamation 
that will head the reply to this letter. Should you, however, 
Mr. Editor, be disposed to give it a place in your far-famed Journal, 
viewing the communication merely as a veterinary subject, I 
think the majority of your readers will be content to smile at it 
as a novelty, although the more grave portion may be angry, and 
perhaps, reprove me for temerity. 
That I may plead some shadow of excuse for thus addressing 
you, permit me to state that my whole time and thoughts have 
been occupied in endeavouring to cure sick and lame horses from 
my earliest days, and having gained experience by a long practice 
in a hunting country (viz. Surrey, notorious from its hills and 
flints for incapacitating the limbs of horses), it has followed 
that lamenesses, arising from diseases of joints , have demanded 
of me, and received, the most sedulous attention. 
The difficulty of establishing a radical cure after the interior 
of a joint has suffered such violent contusions as are consequent 
upon hunting over a rough country, is well known, and has in¬ 
duced or rather compelled me to venture farther with that vete¬ 
rinary instrument called the firing irony than the generality of 
practitioners, having pushed the actual cautery to greater ex¬ 
tremities, in contra-distinction to that method which is commonly 
known by the term superficial firing. 
Now the latter is the generally approved mode, and consists in 
drawing lines in the skin, at certain distances from each other, 
with a red-hot iron, about half or three parts through the common 
integuments. Most of the veterinary authors of the present day 
reprobate the practice of passing the instrument entirely through 
the skin. Vide the 14th edition of Mr. Whited popular work on 
the Diseases of Horses; in his Compendium for the treatment 
of diseases, page 310, he remarks, u The skin should never be 
penetrated; but the cuticle should be destroyed, and a dark- 
brown impression left on the skin.” 
Again, Mr. Percivall’s Veterinary Lectures, 1st volume, page 
358, on the treatment of spavin, this scientific writer observes, 
