22 
THE COMPARATIVE EFFECT OF THE 
proportion his practice of the seton bore to his forty years’ use of 
the firing-iron, still both his inquiries and his experience, as far 
as they have gone, leave a large balance in favour of the iron. 
His mention of the latter to the inflamed chest, makes me regret 
that I had not applied it to my deceased Pioneer horse, already 
alluded to ; although 1 have the comfortable reflection, that it 
was from a disinclination to torturing him that I declined the 
advice—not that, in the state he was in, do I now think the 
suffering would have been great, for the second blister did nut 
rise at all. 
Mr. Thomas Turner next addresses the Association, and on the 
very best ground, making the subject a question of comparative 
value and effept; and which, although we know him to be a 
strenuous advocate for the iron, he expresses a wish should be 
dispassionately discussed. But with what a sweeping clause 
does he commence his oration ! The Surrey sportsmen often 
ask him, he says, why he fires their horses, when the heads of 
his profession seton those placed under their care? Now mark 
his answer ! Because,” says he, “ in many of the lamenesses 
to which horses, and ^our horses especially, are subject, I can¬ 
not do without it.” Then, with regard to the sprain of the back 
sinews—the flexor tendons—the theca, and the surrounding parts 
so thickened as to form a kind of convexity well known to all 
acquainted with the horse —the broken-down /eg—that is only to 
be braced by a vigorous application of the cautery, and penetra¬ 
tion of the integument.” He now, after greatly strengthening 
my hypothesis, that the operation of firing is not so severe 
as it appears to be—and these are his words—proceeds to the 
seton, to which, as also to Mr. Sewell, as the introducer of it, 
he allows much merit', although not in injuries to which he has 
referred. Here he emphatically asserts, that the seton does not, 
cannot produce a tithe part of the effect of deep firing, and here 
I shall leave Mr. Thomas Turner for the present. 
I now find an M.D. (Dr. Billing) mingling in the debate, and 
admitting, that whatever may be the difference in the practice of 
the veterinary and the human surgeon, depending on some diffe¬ 
rence of anatomy and physiology, there can be none in principle. 
The doctor, however, prefaces his remarks by a confession, that 
he has not been accustomed to the treatment of horses, although, 
he says, many of the donkeys of this world had occasionally 
come under his care (their time for being fired is, perhaps, yet 
to come !), consequently what he advances on this subject must 
be considered as mere speculation. At the same time, as I my¬ 
self am equally at sea as to the effect of his moxa on the human 
