Being in this situation, one hand is laid upon the top of the hock, and the entire weight of the body is brought to bear upon that part. The object is three-fold—to obtain, by this means, the earliest intimation of any design on the part of the animal to use the limb; to impede in some measure the extension of the leg; and to gain a point of rest on which to lean, while the head is bent forward to inspect, the free hand being employed to feel the part appropriate to spavin. Afterward comes the trot, the peculiarities to be detected in which have been anticipated.
Now we encounter the important question, What can be done for a spavined horse? If the animal be not lame, let it alone. However large, however unsightly the deposit may be, do not run the chance of exciting a new action in a part where disease exists in a quiescent form.
The regular treatment is to purge, give diuretics, bleed, blister, rowel, seton, periostoteomy, neurotomy, fire, and punch. The bleeding may be great or small, local or general; the blister, mild or severe, applied over half the joint at a time, or rubbed in after the limb has been scored by the iron. Rowels and setons may also be simple, or they may be smeared with irritants, which are made of different strengths. Periostoteomy may be single, or may be made compound by the addition of a seton and a blister. Neurotomy is very unsatisfactory, and very often a most tedious affair when employed to cure spavin. The fire may be down to the true skin; it may be through the skin, and on to the tumor; or it may be inflicted by means of a blunt-pointed instrument, which, when heated, burns its way into the bone itself. The punch also admits of variety; it may be with or without a blister; it may be holes made in a living body, which holes are filled with a corroding paste. Or the operation may consist of the exposure of the bone, and cutting off the offending portion with a saw, or knocking away part of a breathing frame with a chisel and a mallet.
All these tortures have for centuries been inflicted; they have been practiced upon thousands of animals, only for men, at this day, to doubt whether the cruelty has been attended with the slightest service. Flesh, as capable of feeling as our own, has been cut, irritated, burnt, and punched for hundreds of years; and now, at the twelfth hour, such operations are not discarded, but their efficacy is mildly questioned.
Reader, if you have a horse which is lame from spavin, and your calculations tell you it will not pay to nurse the cripple, have it slaughtered. Do not consent to have it tortured for a chance; do not sell it to the certainty of a terrible old age and of immediate torment.
The cure for spavin is good food and rest—perfect rest: such rest or stagnation as a healthy horse submits to in the stable. This, enjoined for months, with the occasional application of a mild blister, with the best of food, to enable nature to rectify man's abuse, will do more good, cost no more money, and occupy no more time than the devilries usually adopted, and very often adopted without success. As an additional motive on the side of humanity, it may be stated that the horse suffers much more when disease is located in the hind than when it is exhibited upon the fore leg. The ravages which, in the first case, would endanger the life, in the last would be borne with comparative tranquillity. The posterior parts of the animal seem to be endowed with exquisite sensibility; yet, in spite of this, the so-called cure for spavin, and the boasted treatment for ages, only consists in torturing the hocks of the animal.
While inflammation exists, apply poultices, and well rub the part with a mixture of belladonna and of opium—one ounce of each drug rubbed down with one ounce of water. Or place opium and camphor on the poultices; or rub the enlargement with equal parts of chloroform and camphorated oil. The pain having subsided and the heat being banished, apply, with friction, some of the following ointment. It may reduce the disease by provoking absorption; at all events, it will check all further growth by rendering further deposit almost an impossibility.
| Iodide of lead | One ounce. |
| Simple ointment | Eight ounces. |
| Mix. |
SPLINT.
The horse, could it only speak, would have sufficient cause to overwhelm man with its injuries. It is to be hoped that He who heeds not language, but reads the heart, will not peruse the horror written on that of the most contented and sweetest-dispositioned of man's many slaves. It is true, colts have spavin and splints. Creatures, whose days of bitterness are as yet to come, exhibit exostoses; but these blemishes are the sad inheritances of the cruel service exacted by thoughtless masters from the progenitors of the deformed. Nature gave the horse a fibro-cartilaginous or elastic union to particular bones, so that all its motions might be bounding and graceful. The animal, thus formed, was presented to man; but the gift was not prized by him to whom it was given. The authority possessed was abused. The capability of the horse was only measured by what it was able, at the risk of its life, to perform. The most humane of modern proprietors is an ignorant tyrant to his graceful bond-servant. The most meek of owners likes his horse to possess high action. The consequence is, the leg, lifted from the ground to the highest possible point, is forcibly driven again to the earth. This pace is imposed upon a creature so docile, it only seeks to learn that which pleases its master, and, in the entirety of its confidence, never mistrusts its instructor. The lesson is learned. The animal soon becomes proud to exhibit its acquirement. High action, however—especially that kind of action the horse is taught to exemplify—soon deranges the system. It breeds inflammation in the fibro-cartilaginous tissues, upon which its chief strain is felt. The union between the splint bones and the cannon, or between the shin-bone and the accessories, one on either side, speedily becomes converted into osseous matter.