Hippodonomia, or the true structure, laws, and economy, of the horse's foot: also podophthora, or a ruinous defect in the principle of the common shoe detected ... with a proposition for a new principle of shoeing / [Bracy Clark].
- Bracy Clark
- Date:
- 1829
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hippodonomia, or the true structure, laws, and economy, of the horse's foot: also podophthora, or a ruinous defect in the principle of the common shoe detected ... with a proposition for a new principle of shoeing / [Bracy Clark]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Nor can we omit to mention another circumstance, which appears to come in strong confirmation of these ideas respecting the frog; which is a passage in the most ancient of all authors on the subject of horses. The venerable Xenophon wrote several hundred years before the art of nail-shoeing was had recourse to, and he remarks, in his advice respecting the selection of a horse, “ that the lofty foot is to be preferred, as in it the frog is raised high above the groundand he further compares those horses whose frogs or soft parts come to the ground, to “ cripples among men, who are wont to go on parts nature never designed they should;”* or, as he observes, go equally on the weak as on the strong parts. The above particular advice appears to point out two very curious circumstances: first, that they did not shoe, for that would have raised the frog high enough, and higher than was necessary, and made the recommendation use- less ; and secondly, by their use of the foot in the natural state, they found by experience that, if the frog was low, by its battering against the ground it was subject to become tender; hence the pre- ference given to the high-placed frog. After the same manner do the veterinarians of the second and third centuries, who were employed in the Roman armies of the Eastern Empire, also recommend the choice of a horse’s foot; but emphatically add “ small” to “ an ele- vated frog,”f as it must, no doubt, be not so subject in consequence to become tender, from being less soft, as well as less exposed to the road. I have, however, observed in young feet, that is, at two or three years old, that the frogs are on a lower level, in respect to the other parts of the foot, than at a more advanced age. As all the parts of * Oi yap irax^s iroAv tuv Aeirruv biacpepovaiv ets eviroblav. tireira oiiSe tovto 8e? AavQaveiv, irdrepov al oirAai eiffiv uxprjAal ^ TairtLval, Kal e/airpocrdev, Kal umcrQzv, al p.\v yap v\f/r]Aal irbfifia) dirb rov 8airt8ov exovm rbv X*Albova KaAovp.£vi]v, al 5e raireival 6p.olws fiaivovai tw re tV^uporaTO), Kal ru p.aAaKUTa’ro} rov iroSbs, wairep oi {iAaicrol ruv avOpuirwv.—nEPI miTIKHS, Ed. LeURC. p. 932. f XeAiSova 8e puKpdv exovres etiiroSes koX ayadol.—Apsyrtus apiid Scrip. Graze. Vet. y>.252. Oi avp.(pvt?s KaTudev Kal x^AiS^as p.iKpas exovrts.—Ibid., p. 253.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22017100_0096.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
