The tourniquet is now removed, and the wound is examined for bleeding vessels.  If the haemorrhage is only slight, the wound should be merely dabbed gently with the antiseptic wool until it has stayed.  A larger vessel may be taken up with the artery forceps and ligatured, or the haemorrhage stopped by torsion.  On no account, unless it it done to stay haemorrhage that is otherwise uncontrollable, should the wound be sutured with blood in it.  With the wound once dry and clean, it is well to insert three or four silk sutures, but care must be taken not to draw them too tightly.  This done, the patient may be allowed to get up. After-treatment.—­This is simple.  Over each wound is placed a pledget of antiseptic cotton-wool or tow, and the whole lightly covered with a bandage soaked in an antiseptic solution.  For the first night the animal should be tied up short to the rack, and the following morning the bandages removed.  A little boracic acid or iodoform, or a mixture of the two combined with starch (starch and boracic acid equal parts, iodoform 1 drachm to each ounce) should now be dusted over the wounds, the antiseptic pledgets renewed, and the bandage readjusted over all.

At the end of three or four days the bandages may be dispensed with.  All that is necessary now is an occasional dusting with an antiseptic powder, and, as far as possible, the restriction of movement.  At the end of a week the sutures may be removed, and the animal turned into a loose box or out to pasture.

E. MEDIAN NEURECTOMY.

As a palliative for lameness when confined to the foot, one would imagine that the plantar operation would be all sufficient.  There are operators, however, who state that the results following section of the median nerve have been such as to cause them to entirely abandon the lower operation in its favour.  If only for that reason a brief mention of the operation must be made here.

The operation was first performed in this country in October, 1895, the subject being one of the out-patients at the Royal Veterinary College Free Clinique.

For five or six years following this date Professor Hobday performed the operation some several hundred times, and was certainly instrumental in bringing the operation into prominence.  Though so recently introduced here, it appears to have been practised for several years on the Continent, originating in Germany as early as 1867.  In that country a first public account of it was published in 1885 by Professor Peters of Berlin, while in France it was introduced by Pellerin in 1892.  In this operation a portion of the median nerve is excised on the inside of the elbow-joint just below the internal condyle of the humerus.  Here the nerve runs behind the artery, then crosses it, and descends in a slightly forward direction behind the ridge formed by the radius.

The position of the limb most suitable for the operation is exactly that we have described as most convenient for the plantar excision.  The animal is cast, preferably anaesthetized, and the limb removed from the hobbles, and held as far forward as is possible by an assistant with the side-line.