ACTUAL CAUTERY AND SETON. 
U9 
ture to ask, should not this doubtful point be at once cleared 
up? Why should not one or two equally broken down horses 
be purchased at the joint expense of the advocates for the cautery 
and the seton, or, the new and old systems, as they may be 
termed, and the experiment at once made ? Should it prove 
favourable to the seton—conceiving, as I do, that the pain and 
suffering produced by the use of it must be infinitely less than 
those arising from the ridge and furrowed leg, which that of 
Paddy may be denominated—it would be a triumph for the 
advocates of the seton and humanity at the same time. De¬ 
monstrative evidence is here scarcely satisfactory. 
I beg to offer one more remark on this case. It appears Paddy 
soon afterwards failed on the hitherto sound leg. I conceive this 
to have been, in a great measure, the result of his having, for so 
many consecutive months—at all events, weeks—thrown an 
undue portion of his weight on that leg, to avoid pressure on 
the other. Would it not then be well, that a horse subjected 
to so long a period of suffering—taking for granted that such is 
the case—should be slung during some part of the day, so as to 
relieve his legs of a certain portion of his weight? Mr. Per- 
civalfs sling, a plate of which is given in his Hippopatho- 
logy*,” would exactly answer the purpose. 
Mr. Turner, senior, next appears in this very interesting de¬ 
bate, doing justice to the seton, and especially in cases of stifle- 
lameness, contused shoulders, as well as in those where the 
injury is not exactly within the reach of manual detection. The 
result of his own experiment on the trotter is most satisfactory. 
He, however, concludes with somewhat of a damper to the ad¬ 
vocates of the seton. He not only thinks, that the contused 
shoulder of the trotter might have been equally well cured by 
the cautery, but looking at the “ general routine of practice,” 
awards a balance of 20 to 1 in favour of iron over steel ! 
Mr. Holmes says, ‘‘many horses have gone away sound from 
the College,after having been setoned.” This cannot be doubted; 
still I should have liked to have known something of the gene¬ 
rality as well as the peculiarity of their diseases ; and whether 
there were amongst them any cases of injury to legs approach¬ 
ing to that of Paddy’s. With respect to the blemishing, I 
conceive Mr. Holmes does not mean to assert that setoning 
leaves no mark. Such is certainly not the case in this country, 
whatever it may be in England. Still, the blemish from the iron 
is ten-fold greater, and although, as instanced by Mr. Turner, in 
* A plate of this sling will appear in my forthcoming work in the French 
language, on the race-horse, for the use of the French and Belgic Jockey 
Clubs. 
