LAMENESS JN HORSES. 
439 
this is an operation which experience has taught me to defer to 
the latest possible period. I have had so many reasons for aver¬ 
sion to puncturing the distended cap, that nothing but sheer neces¬ 
sity now drives me to it. A very small (surgeon’s) trocar is the 
best instrument to use for drawing off the fluid ; and, first, an aper¬ 
ture should be made upon the superior side of the tumour, letting 
the inflammatory consequences from that subside before any attempt 
be made to make a similar perforation opposite to it, through the 
inferior parietes of the tumour. To prevent the upper orifice from 
closing, it may be probed daily, which will let off any collected 
fluid; and the inferior opening, after it is made, may for a time be 
served so likewise; and, when irritation has sufficiently subsided, 
a seton of some twisted silk may be run through the cavity of the 
cap. This will produce suppurative action, should it not have 
come on before ; and after such action has become completely esta¬ 
blished, and is on the decline, the withdrawal of the seton will 
probably be followed by the granulative process, closing the aper¬ 
tures and obliterating the sac; leaving after all, however, more or 
less thickening and induration of the cap. This, at least, is the 
desired progress and termination of the case. Now and then, how¬ 
ever, matters go on very differently. Inflammation and swelling 
to an alarming degree follow puncturation of the cap; the limb 
swells to a great size; constitutional irritation to a greater or less 
amount supervenes, and we begin to wish we had never operated. 
Some French veterinarians have, however, carried the practice 
much farther than this; they have ventured upon 
The Injection of Bursal Swellings after having pene¬ 
trated them. 
A French surgeon—M. Velpeau, professor at La Charite— 
having practised with much success the injection of tincture of 
iodine, diluted, instead of solutions of zinc, in cases of hydrocele 
in man, M. Bouley (the younger), a French veterinarian of cele¬ 
brity, resolved to give the same a trial in practice on horses having 
enlarged bursse and joints. The latter, however, from woful 
failures, seeming to infer some sort of contradiction to the state¬ 
ments of the former, the Alfort College very properly took the 
affair up, with the determination, so far as veterinary practice 
went, of setting the question at rest. Accordingly, a horse having 
“ a puffy tumour growing upon the outer side of the hollow of the 
hock, attended with some slight lameness,’' who had been twice 
fired to no purpose, and who had now a similar tumour growing 
opposite to the former on the inner side of the hock, who in fact, 
as far as we can understand, exhibited an unusually large and in¬ 
veterate thorough-pin, the diseased hock being altogether pretty 
well double its natural size, for it had the following operation per- 
