That in many cases, when all other methods--surgical and medicinal--have failed, there is an immediate and total freedom from pain and lameness no one will deny. This, if it restores to active work an animal that would otherwise have had to have been cast aside, is ample justification for giving the operation, in spite of its many unfortunate terminations, a real place among the more highly favoured remedial measures to our hand. 'For _Contracted Hoofs_, viewing them in the light of idiopathic disease, or as being the immediate cause of the existing lameness in the uninflamed condition of the foot, and when consequential changes of its organism have taken place which bid defiance to therapeutic measures, _neurotomy_ is a _warrantable resource_' (Percival). 'For _Ringbone_ neurotomy has been practised with perfect success, after blistering and firing had both failed, notwithstanding the work the animal had to perform afterwards was of the most trying nature' (_ibid_.). For _Navicular Disease_, when that malady is diagnosed, the earlier neurectomy is performed the better. The greater work given to the diseased bursa and bone, and the return of the contracted heels to the normal, brought about by the greater freedom with which the foot is used, are claimed by many to effect a cure. Writing of navicular disease, and mentioning his belief in the possibility of the diseased bone effecting its own repair after the operation, Harold Leeney, M.R.C.V.S., says: 'The expansion of the heel, and rapid development of the frog (in this and many other cases) immediately after the operation, has not, I venture to think, attracted so much attention as it deserves, and may have something to do with those cases which appear to be actually _cured_, not merely made to go sound by absence of pain.'[A] [Footnote A: _Veterinary Record_, vol. xi., p. 297.] Speaking of the median operation before a meeting of the Central Veterinary Medical Society, Professor Hobday says:[A] [Footnote A: _Veterinary Record_, vol. xiii., p. 427.] 'For old-standing lamenesses, when due to splints, exostoses, chronically sprained, thickened, and painful perforans and perforatus tendons, or cases of that kind which cause pain by pressing on the adjacent nerve structures, after all other known methods have failed, median neurectomy is the operation which will be most likely to give the animal a new lease of life and usefulness.'