If our antiseptic precautions have been thorough, the dressings and bandages so adjusted may be allowed to remain without disturbance for from eight to fourteen days.  In this, however, the veterinary surgeon must be largely guided by the symptoms of his patient.  If, at the end of the first three or four days, the animal maintains a vigorous appetite, if he commences to place a little weight on the foot, and if the thermometer gives no indication of a rise beyond the one or two degrees of ordinary surgical fever, then the surgeon may know that things are proceeding satisfactorily.  Pawing movements with the foot, inability to place weight upon it, loss of appetite, an increase in the number of respirations, and a serious rise of temperature, denote the opposite state of affairs.  The wound is in all probability suppurating.  The bandages and dressings should therefore be removed, and the wound either redressed and bandaged, or treated as an ordinary open wound.

Ordinarily, however, if the operation has been properly performed, healing takes place by first intention, and the wound when the bandages are removed at the end of the first or second week appears clean and dry.

Having assured ourselves that such is the case, we dress the foot in exactly the same manner as before, save that so many bandages are not put on.  A similar dressing is repeated weekly until such time as the wound shows sufficient growth of horn—­quite a thin pellicle—­to act as a protective.  It may then be left undressed, except for some simple hoof dressing and a bandage.

Complete healing of the wound takes from about four to eight weeks, at the end of which time the animal can be again gradually put into work.  The labour, however, should be light, and quite three or four months should be allowed to elapse before any attempt is made to put him to heavy work.

Should the second method of operating have been the one adopted, then there is one slight difference in the after-dressing that needs attention calling to it.  In this case we have more or less of a hidden cavity left to deal with rather than the broad and open wound left in either of the other methods.  This cavity, left by the extirpation of the cartilage, must be thoroughly dressed with iodoform or chinosol, or with Bayer’s iodoform in ether.  The packing with carbolized tow and the bandaging may then be proceeded with as before.

In conclusion, we may say that the operation is one of some delicacy, and needs a good surgeon for its successful performance.  Furthermore, no one of the antiseptic precautions we have advised can be omitted.  It is, perhaps, these two considerations (and in justice to the English surgeon we should say most probably the latter of them) that have prevented this operation from being generally adopted.

That it is successful there is no gainsaying.  Professor Bayer, of the Vienna School, with whose name is associated the last of the three methods of operating we have described, is enthusiastic in praise of the operation, and says:  ’The favourable results that I have got by this operation have caused me wholly to abandon the medicinal treatment, and to prefer in all cases the surgical operation as being the best means to the end.’