ACTUAL CAUTERY AND SKTON. 
171 
subjects of his power will be no less beiiefitted than himself, the 
relation between them being reciprocal. Both Heathens and 
Christians have read us excellent lessons on this subject, all 
tending: to the same end. We should be neither indifferent to 
their sufferings, nor wantonly instrumental in producing them ; 
but having been instrumental to them, we should be solicitous to 
mitigate pain, both in duration and degree, by the gentlest modes 
of inflicting it when necessary to produce a cure. 
I am glad to find you hold to the opinion of the bandage. 
Take away that, and you would destroy much of the sportsman’s 
faith in firing legs. This appears to me to be a natural result 
of lessening the external surface of the parts, accounted for 
even under the severity of the Messrs. Turner’s irons. There is, 
as you say, a ridge of contracted integument as hard as any 
cartilage, but with none of its elasticity—not a temporary thing, 
but becoming tighter and harder by time. 
April 26th .—We now enter upon the third and last discus¬ 
sion on the comparative merit and effect of the two important 
operations ; and it is by no means the least interesting, foras¬ 
much as it gives birth to questions and their answers respecting 
the modus operundi and its results, which are not only satis¬ 
factory to owners of studs, but also as affording an opportunity to 
Mr. Thomas Turner to soften down the picture he had, perhaps, 
coloured too highly, in the extraordinary case of the Surrey 
huntsman’s horse. Mr. T. Turner likewise confirms, to a great 
degree, the opinion I had ventured to give as to the suffering of 
the horse under the operation of even severe firings allowing 
the common acceptation of that term. 
As regards the danger supposed to attend deep cautery lesions, 
it is satisfactory to hear it lightly treated by Messrs. Turner; 
and as it appears that a considerable number of horses of all de¬ 
scriptions are annually operated upon by them after the new 
system of firing, it is gratifying to find that Mr. Turner, senior, 
is about to publish a work which will enable others who may 
attempt to follow their example more generally than they now 
do, to take those measures of alleviating after-suffering which 
have succeeded so well—the remarkable fact having been stated, 
that not one horse, in a period of twenty years, has died from 
the consequences of the operation of deep cautery lesions. 
Whilst Mr. Thomas Turner admits the occasional advantage of 
the seton, his extensive practice in a hunting and coaching 
country has, it seems, convinced him that there are affections of 
the bones, the ligaments, and the thecae of the tendons of horses’ 
legs, for the relief of which the cautery alone, judiciously and 
severely employed, is the only certain remedy. Ills concluding 
