64 
G. BAILEY. 
careless use of the instrument in the hands of unskilful men. 
I now come to consider the merits of the “ House clamp,” so 
called from the name of its inventor, an instrument which I have 
successfully employed with uniformly good results in my prac¬ 
tice, never having yet seen a single unfavorable termination from 
its use. I have come to believe the employment of this instru¬ 
ment to be much safer than the ecraseur, in that the firm and 
uniform crushing of the cord, below the clot , serves as a guard and 
insurance against hemorrhage which renders such a result almost 
if not quite impossible, while the slight amount of pain and irri¬ 
tation endured by the patient after the division of the non-vas- 
cular portion of the cord, is always an assurance that no undue 
amount of inflammation has been induced, calculated to retard the 
healing process which lias been excited by the operation ; and while 
I have never known of a case of hemorrhage, primary or second¬ 
ary, resulting from its use, I have been called several times to at¬ 
tend cases of excessive hemorrhage where the ecraseur had been 
unskilfully employed. I need only to refer to the complications 
arising from castration, immediate and remote, such as hernia, 
hemorrhage, champignon or scirrhous cord, peritonitis, enteritis, 
gangrene, tetanus, amaurosis, and rarely, glanders and farcy, as 
these are well understood by the profession, only to say that their 
avoidance can best be promoted and insured by the most humane 
and painless mode of operating, and these I believe to be embod¬ 
ied in the use of the u House clamp.” 
I come now to what I consider a very important auxiliary to 
castration proper, being no less than the removal of the non- 
apparent. testicle from the cryptorchide , or ridgling horse. Until 
a safe and expeditious method of operating upon cryptorchides 
had been discovered, the veterinary profession were “ groping 
in the dark” in their endeavors to relieve solipeds of an incum¬ 
brance that not many years ago was thought to be impracticable, 
if not impossible. The advantages of such an operation, if its 
entire safety could be practically demonstrated, were self-evident 
to any one who ever had any experience with a ridgling horse ; 
for I think I hazard nothing in saying they are the most unsafe 
and ungovernable brutes of the equine genus. Now that the 
