On founder. Pedicida / [Anon].

  • Bracy Clark
Date:
[1834?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On founder. Pedicida / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tumble-down horses, or of broken knees, or of people killed by the falling of their horses, while such is happening to us daily, and among the killed we show at the head of the list two kings of Britain, and those of the most renowned and important character, destroyed by the stumbling of their horses, as we have elsewhere also observed; so that neither royal nor noble birth, wealth nor station, can exempt its possessors from the fatal effects of the practice. With the Greek veterinary writers of Constantinople, or of the eastern empire of Rome, is found, however, a disorder of the feet mentioned by them, which appears to have been attended with the loss of, or shedding, of the hoofs. This disorder was called by the name /cpiUW'?, Crithiasis,—translated Hordeatio, or the Barley disease, the usual food at that period of their horses, and it is described as originating in the stomach.* And there can be no doubt that a mass of undigested food of any kind, weighing on the stomach, would paralyse its actions, and derange the whole system. We see at times cachectic and strumous children, that eat voraciously, losing the use of their lower extremities, apparently, from an oppression of the nerves going to those parts, which nerves are situated below the stomach, and are proceeding from the loins. Also after a severe attack of typhus, or low nervous fever, we often see, if the patient recovers, a peeling off of the cuticle, a loss of the hair, and even of the nails ; that it is not therefore much to be wondered at, that the hoofs of animals should be similarly affected, from any deficiency obviously of nervous energy. In nerving horses also, as it is called, the paralytic state into which the feet are brought, by the loss of their nerves by this vile operation, will occasion the arteries going to these parts for their supply, to lose their energy, for the action between nerves and arteries is mutual and reciprocal, and either will become benumbed by the absence of the other. So that the arteries in the above case becoming paralyzed, and losing in degree their powers of secretion, an insufficient support causes a separation to take place, and, finally, a falling off, as we have on several occasions ourselves witnessed, with deplorable consequences, indeed no less than the death of the animal. I formerly apprehended the very ancient writer, Simon, the earliest we know of on horses, and quoted by Xenophon, was alluding to the foundered foot, when, in his recommendation in the choice of a horse, he warned them against a soft footed one, and to prefer rather “ one whose foot, when struck upon, resounded like a cymbal.” I now however believe, that he merely meant a flat-foot, where the furch, from being- low, met the ground, as being of too tender a character to bear much battering upon the road. And Horace also, yve now believe, only meant the same thing in his molli fulta pede, for this disorder, we think, might probably have been somewhat of a rarity with them. * See Scriptores Graeci Veterin. p. 33. Ruellii Latine rcddita. fol. 14.
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