478 A CASE OF rOISONIXG BY THE RANUNCULUS. 
serious inconveniences. The latter requires more assistance than 
the former. With the new method I have not unfrequently per¬ 
formed the operation with one assistant alone at the head. Of 
course, it requires tact and nerve, and without these, except under 
circumstances extraordinarily propitious, a man can have little hope 
of success. 
I am unwilling to trespass farther on your pages, and shall close 
these remarks with another case. Last year a thorough-bred colt, 
four years old, then in training, turned restive. In consequence I 
was ordered to castrate him. He was in tiptop condition, with the 
testes remarkably large. I operated with complete success. Such 
were the peculiar features of the case, that I should not have ven^ 
tured on my usual plan of only securing the principal artery, had 
I not had a second remedy at hand. Contrary to my expectations, 
there were not two ounces of blood lost. 
I might, did space permit, adduce another in proof of the small 
amount of inflammation generally induced by the operation. I al¬ 
lude to a horse of Joshua Riculx, Esq., in this island, which I cas¬ 
trated about fourteen years ago, and which he rode three days after. 
But it must be admitted, nevertheless, that this cannot be stated 
as the rule, but rather as an exception, although a useful one, and 
as going to prove the perfect safety of the system. 
With sincere wishes for the continued success of your valuable 
publication, I am, &c. 
A CASE OF POISONING BY THE RANUNCULUS 
OR CROWFOOT. 
By the same. 
- I BEG to state a case I have lately been called to as further con¬ 
firmatory of the crowsfoot being, occasionally at least, the cause of 
those ulcers, blisters, &c., as described by Professor Gelle in his 
work on Cattle Pathology,” which gave rise to my paper in your 
Number for October in the last year. 
F. De Jersey, Esq., requested my immediate attendance on one 
of his coach-horses which was dangerously ill; and, as circumstances 
prevented my going immediately to him, the horse was brought to 
me by the coachman, who was much alarmed at the state in which 
the animal was, having left him quite well on the preceding night. 
The symptoms were, swelling of the head, running at the eyes 
and mouth, with large blisters under the tongue, which rendered 
him nearly incapable of opening his mouth or eating any thing 
there were also great stupor and a full pulse. There was so 
near a resemblance to what I had before witnessed as symptoms 
