Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Ring-bones or ossified cartilages / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![RING-BONES OR OSSIFIED CARTILAGES. [Second Edition, London, 1842.] The ossification of the lateral cartilages of the foot of the horse, has appeared to us to proceed generally, from a too fixed and motionless state, into which the hoof has been brought by the application of the common iron shoe, nailed both sides the foot. We have however Ring-bones not unfrequently occurring in cart horses, and especially dray-horses, naturally, and which in them appear to take place independently of the shoeing, which led us to imagine that in this case the vast magnitude and rigidity of the hoof itself, (for these animals are a sort of monster among horses), were producing the same effects, as the iron bound foot in the case of nag-horses; hence the explanation of this apparent anomaly. We have often had occasion to observe, that the ossification did not commence in the middle of the cartilage and extend thence to its extremities, but was commencing usually at its insertion in the bone, and extended thence to nearly all parts of them. These lateral bodies of the foot which we call cartilages, do not appear precisely of a similar organization to the parts so called in the joints and other parts of the animal system, and might without impropriety receive a name distinct and peculiar to them, since they are vastly more diversified and elaborately formed in the different parts of the horse’s foot, than are these other cartilages. And since cartilages in general are the grand modellers of bone and preceding it, but here they are lasting in this state for life, that is if perfectly healthy. A word therefore to express them by, would we apprehend be useful to us in this case. These remarkable bodies are in fact modeling the frame work of all the posterior parts of the horse’s foot, as a substitute for bone, and affording that yielding and elasticity, that this extraordinary organ requires. But for a more particular description of these singular structures, we refer our reader to page 111 of the Hipponomia, and their appearance pi. xii, (a supplementary plate), where for distinction they are called the great podal cartilages, or podo- chondria. Marmora appears indeed from Vegetius, Lib. ii. c. 48, to have been applied to them by the ancients, no doubt from their hardness when ossified, and from affording the impression of their being like to marble. Their mallones also were, we believe, what we denominate wind- galls, and thorough pins, but with less elegance or of truth indeed. These cartilages in their ossification, appear to spread from the point of their insertion in the coffin bone, gradually indurating through their whole extent, till the hardness rising above the hoof it can be felt by the fingers, and this part above the hoof obtaining the name of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2200564x_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
