438 
LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
the perfect fetter. Cautious and prudential management, I may 
repeat, will rarely in the end fail of complete success. 
Medical Treatment. — It is hardly necessary to observe, 
after what has been prefaced, that no practitioner would think 
of entering on the medical treatment of capped hock until he had 
become satisfied that every liability to fresh injury had been re¬ 
moved ; and when this is done, the success of treatment must entirely 
depend upon the state the diseased part is left in. So long as the 
case be recent, and consist of no more than the effusion of fluid, 
without any structural change of the cap, little else is required 
further than the abstraction of the cause to, in time, insure the 
subsidence of the enlargement. A dose of physic, fomentation, 
evaporating or refrigerant lotion, and walking exercise, will acce¬ 
lerate the reduction: withal however, do what we will, a capped 
hock will take some time in disappearing, and this period will be 
lengthened according to the character and magnitude of the en¬ 
largement. Instead of dallying with such a case as this, however, 
or throwing the horse out of work on account of it, the advisable 
plan of proceeding is, as soon as the horse has gone through his 
physicking, and that and the fomentation, &c. have carried off any 
existing inflammation, to return the horse to his work, treating the 
swelling during the while with perfrications night and morning 
with some iodine and mercurial or antimonial ointment. Supposing 
the application does but doubtful good, the hand-rubbing will, at 
all events, tend to promote absorption of the collected fluid. 
If we make our minds up to carry matters farther than this, we 
may proceed to blistering the cap ; and, in combination with pur¬ 
gative and diuretic medicine, and topical blood-letting so far as it 
can be practised, I do not know a more effectual disperser of the 
tumour. At the same time, there are few persons who would like 
to give up a workable horse so long as a sharp blister—the most 
effective one in the end—would require. On this account a sweat¬ 
ing blister is commonly preferred ; which ought to be sponged off 
as soon as it has elicited discharge, and the sponging repeated 
daily, and then a horse after a week may be taken to work again. 
Stimulating as a blister is, its application had better be suspended 
so long as any inflammatory disposition is continuing ; and even 
then, when applied, it will be found at first to augment the tumour, 
and in some cases considerably. Physicking and fomentation— 
and blood-letting if necessary—will however soon again reduce it, 
and then will follow sensible and comparatively speedy diminution 
of the swollen cap. 
PUNCTURATION OF THE Cap. —In the instance of any enormous 
enlargement of the cap, it may become advisable to give exit to the 
contained fluid ; though, for my own part, I feel it my duty to say, 
