ON FIRING. 
563 
merely to set the over-distended capsular ligament at liberty, 
would not the knife be more humane, rather than run the risk of 
the excessive irritation and dangerous sloughing, which I have 
every reason to believe would follow Mr. Turner’s proposed hor¬ 
rid and monstrous operation? Mr. Turner, I perceive, has ex¬ 
tended his deep firing also to the canine species. Poor animals! 
I hope this plan will not long continue in use, such a practice 
being unnecessarily cruel, and barbarous in the extreme, whether 
practised on man or brute. I have not entered into the true 
rationale and effects of firing, trusting some one more able will 
handle that part of the subject, which Mr. Turner does not appear 
to me fully to comprehend. - 1 am, Sir, 
Your most obedient servant, 
Grosvenor Mews, Bond Street, GEORGE b ENWICK, \ . S. 
August 24, 1830. 
MR. TURNER’S ANSWER TO MR. FENWICK ON FIRING FOR 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
[From the Lancet, Sept. 18, 1830.] 
To the Editor of “ The Lancet .” 
1 • J - - I ' i . ■ * . * . , i *. • I * • J f » * . * • j (. | ; f p 
Sir, — Having' observed in The Lancet, for the 4th of Sept, 
at page 901, a letter from Mr. George Fenwick in reply to a 
paper of mine inserted in The Lancet for August the 21st, on 
the operation of firing for lamenesses, I am induced to offer the 
following answers to Mr. Fenwick’s questions, though I cannot 
help prefacing them with a short comment on the asperity with 
which Mr. Fenwick has expressed his objections to my method 
of operating. I can conceive only two circumstances under 
which I might have deserved such a reply, viz. if I had been a 
quack-doctor, or had rashly promulgated the formidable mode 
of operating, merely upon shallow theoretical grounds; but the 
truth is, I have been constantly practising these cautery lesions 
(or, to use Mr. Fenw ick’s aw ful w ords, this “ horrid and monstrous 
operation ”) for the last fifteen years and upwards, both in the 
army and in private practice, and there is no veterinary instru¬ 
ment that I take in hand w ith more confidence than the firing- 
iron, after a cautious investigation of the seat of lameness. 
But to the point:—Mr. Fenwick says, that in order to put the 
case beyond all cavil, he will suppose me called on to fire a dis¬ 
eased fetlock-joint, and asks, would I then make the red-hoi iron 
pass boldly through the skin by crucial incisions till it reached 
the cellular tissue immediately covering the ligaments, tendons, 
