180 STRANGULATED HERNIA, ETC. 
This, I am thankful to say, seldom occurs, through the effi¬ 
cient system of supervision exercised over the animals; but, 
still we are liable to this accident occasionally, even where 
every care is exercised. 
And now a word or two in reference to this truly formida¬ 
ble accident. When a young practitioner meets with a case, 
he knows the danger attending it, that is, if he knows the 
horse is ruptured at all, and being willing to do anything 
rather than open the scrotum, he naturally resorts to the 
taxis, and after labouring away, for I fear to say how long, 
with one arm up the rectum and the other manipulating as 
near as possible to the seat of stricture (“ mulling,” as it is 
called in Hindostanee), he fastens a cord round the scrotum, 
high'up towards the stricture, and fancies he has done the 
trick; that is, he has reduced the hernia ; when, in reality, 
he has only confined the incarcerated gut in a smaller space, 
and thereby enhanced the danger of losing his patient. 
Eventually he lets the horse up to find no abatement , but rather 
an increase of the symptoms diagnostic of this truly formidable 
state. And what can be more inconsistent than this mode of 
practice, so terrible and fatal in its results? Fancy sewing up 
an animal’s eye for ophthalmia, and applying friction so as to 
bring about its normal state, and this is analogous to the treat¬ 
ment adopted when friction and the ligature are applied to 
the cord for scrotal hernia; for such treatment is simply 
irritating an already strictured and engorged intestine, thereby 
accelerating mortification, to the utter extinction of every 
hope or chance of success. Every hour lost augments the 
difficulty. It is true, the animal may die after the operation, 
from more than one cause, but he must die if he is not cut, 
and that speedily, too; therefore, let me urge the necessity 
of at once casting the animal on his back, with his quarters 
elevated, and proceeding to open the scrotum as for castra¬ 
tion. With a very light hand the operator must carefully 
and delicately do this, until the testicle bursts forth to view, 
he will then see the imprisoned and strictured gut. He will 
now pass his index finger down the cord to the internal ring, 
and there he will find the stricture so tight as scarcely to 
admit the point of his finger. If he can sufficiently relax 
the stricture with his finger, to allow the gut to fall into the 
abdomen (as I have done in one instance only), well and 
good, and in this he will perhaps best succeed by keeping 
his finger through the stricture during the struggles of the 
animal; but failing such a happy result, he must pass the 
concealed bistourie, and very carefully dilate the stricture, 
easing the now liberated intestine back into the abdomen. 
