OBSEliVATlONS ON NEUROTOMY. 
259 
cedure will he defend himself from every shaft of censure which 
unsuccessfulness or untoward consequencess might cause to be di¬ 
rected against him : he will, in fact, have so fortified himself in his 
own castle, that the direst enemy of neurotomy will attack him in 
vain upon the score of his failures; while he is holding forth the 
flag of success, multiplied many folds by the lists of his cures. 
Time—that leveller of all things and persons—never fails in the 
end to disclose to us the true value of every innovation or disco¬ 
very ; and it has now done this with neurotomy : the operation 
stands completely unmasked—divested on the one hand of all the 
flowery prospects which the fond views of its advocates had at¬ 
tached to it, and on the other rescued from that undeserved obli¬ 
vion into which its opponents would fain long ago have hurled it. 
No one now-a-days regards neurotomy as infallible; no one would 
think of recommending its performance in every case of foot lame¬ 
ness ; no one, I repeat, would operate at all, until all other mea¬ 
sures had been tried in vain. 
In the autumn of the year 1837, Lord W. B. shewed me for my 
opinion a brown horse, lame in the foot, 16 hands high, and full of 
strength and breeding, and worth, sound, at least 200 guineas. It 
proved a case of disease of the navicular joint. Large and repeated 
blood-lettings from the lame foot, succeeded by blisters upon the 
pastern, and long rest, removed the lameness; but work invariably 
caused a relapse. He was naturally a pigeon-toed horse, boih in 
standing and action: in fact, his only fault lay—where imperfec¬ 
tion but too frequently lies—in the formation of his fore legs. In 
July 1838, his lordship, tired of fresh attacks of the lameness, said 
one morning to me “ P., 1 am resolved to have the brown horse 
nerved—what think you of it ?” “ Why, what I think of it, is this,— 
that it will probably restore him to soundness; but that, should 
you intend to hunt him, you may one da}^ or other come down, 
horse and all, and meet with some very serious accident.” The 
horse was neurotomized, and became quite sound, and remained so, 
his lordship riding him in the interval as charger, until March 1839, 
when he fell lame in the other foot. His lordship being away at 
the time, I treated the lameness by blood-letting from the arm, 
warm bath, and poultices, and was in this mild manner amending 
the case, when Lord B. returned. It being just at the season of the 
year when a charger is indispensable, and my patient’s master being 
impatient, and inflexibly set against any more long doings, I was, 
at his instigation, prompted once more to have recourse to the 
knife. The horse was now neurotomized in the other, the near 
fore-leg; and with the same success as before. After this, he 
went on doing charger’s duty until last January, when he fell lame 
in the off fore—the foot that was first operated on. For this, warm 
