256 
W. L. ZUILL. 
much better than my own, while some have fallen as low as - 
seventy-five per cent. (75%) of cures. In my own case, the first 
twelve operations show one hundred per cent. (100%) entirely 
cured, while the first sixteen (16) only give seventy-five per cent. 
( 75 %) successful. This tends to show that we cannot base con¬ 
clusions upon a small number of operations, and the larger the 
number of cases the more nearly will be obtained correct re¬ 
sults. In addition to those, I have twenty-six operations made 
by other practitioners, eight by Dr. C. H. Magill, six by Dr. 
Charles Williams and twelve by Dr. Thos. B. Rogers; out of 
this number six were not cured, and I consider the patient not 
cured if he is lame two months after the operation; this gives us 
a total of ninety-one operations with fifteen per cent. (15%) of 
failures; this percentage may appear to be large, but much of it 
is due to experimental operations on old horses over twenty,which 
should not have been included in statistics of operations done in 
actual practice. If those experimental operations are excluded, it 
will bring the total percentage of cures up to what I have ob¬ 
tained in my own practice, that is eighty-eight per cent. (88%). 
Operative Procedure — Anatomy. . I shall only dwell upon 
the surgical anatomy of the hock, sufficiently long to call your 
attention to the most important and essential points. The out¬ 
lines of this internal face may be said to represent an irregular 
tetragon, the supero-anterior angle of which is formed by the 
internal tuberosity of the tibia, the postero-inferior angle formed 
by the head of the internal rudimentary metatarsal bone. These 
two points are the land marks which guide us in making our in¬ 
cision which is upon the inferior third of an imaginary line drawn 
from one to the other. The skin of this region is quite thick and 
wascular, producing quite a haemorrhage during the operation, 
which principally comes from an arteriol in the deeper portions 
of the cutaneous structures. The next layer of tissue is com¬ 
posed of quite loose connective tissue, immediately beneath which 
\we ifi-nd a layer of dense fibrous structure which is portion of the 
ttibial fascia. This structure must be cut through in order to ex¬ 
pose the tendon and to which it is more or less intimately united. 
