168 
COUNTER-IRRITATION. 
By Thomas Greaves, F.R.C.V.S., Manchester. 
Since this subject was so ably introduced by Mr. Peter 
Taylor, of Manchester, before the Liverpool Association, I 
have given it a good deal of consideration, and wish to record 
my thoughts while they are fresh in my mind. It is a sub¬ 
ject I have always taken a deep interest in, and have written 
several papers upon it, which are recorded in the journals. 
During my apprenticeship of six years I clipped scores, pro¬ 
bably hundreds, of horses’ sides, about sixteen or eighteen 
inches square over each side, and blistered them well with 
fly-blister ointment, the blister repeated for two or three 
days; in those days bleeding, too, was always resorted to in 
pneumonia and in pleurisy. I have seen many horses recover 
and many die under this treatment. Since my apprentice¬ 
ship, about 1840, we had a good deal of influenza prevailing, 
and some of the cases gravitated into pneumonia; many 
died. I observed that nearly every one that was severely 
blistered died; as a consequence, blistering ceased to be a 
favourite remedy, and got into disuse. Bleeding, too, about 
this time, was becoming discarded by many eminent prac¬ 
titioners, both in human and in veterinary medicine. I 
found my patients recovered in less time, the fever never 
was so high, and I am quite satisfied my per centage of dead 
ones was considerably less than it was when I resorted to 
blistering almost indiscriminately. I do not now use three 
pounds of mustard in twelve months to the sides. I am 
quite aware that blistering, or what is called counter-irrita¬ 
tion, is still practised by some eminent practitioners. Some 
of my nearest and dearest friends—gentlemen whose judg¬ 
ment and intelligence I hold in the highest possible esteem 
—I am well assured that they hold their opinions conscien¬ 
tiously, and that they are the outcome of experience and 
habit; they have recourse to the application of mustard to 
the sides early in the attack, and estimate at a very high 
value the infiltration produced in the cellular membrane 
— the more the better. I once held these opinions, 
although I have always failed to see sound reason in them; 
but I have since then seen in hundreds, probably in 
thousands of instances, disease in the lungs accompanied 
with greatly accelerated breathing and quickened pulse 
subside without the slightest counter-irritation to the sides. 
