A Treatise on the Structure, Functions, and Diseases of the Foot and Leg of the Horse

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840. Excerpt: ... could not fail to be the case on the most common mechanical principles, the parts not being rigid but flexible. In the unshod foot, and on the natural soil, the same result would by no means take place; the heels do not penetrate the ground deeper than the toe in the majority of feet. The only difference that we can detect between the heels coming to the ground and the other parts doing so, is that the former, being connected above with elastic substance, yield in a slight degree. If, instead of the experiment of Professor Coleman, a shoe were nailed to the foot, but touched it only at the heels and quarters, there being the same space left between the shoe and the front of the foot at the other parts, as is left between the heel and shoe in the experiment mentioned, then, on the weight of the animal resting on the ground, the toe would descend till it met the shoe; and thus just the contrary result would take place to that which attends Professor Coleman's experiment, --a result in either case opposed to nature, and one which may be attributed wholly to the elastic properties of the foot. Mr. B. Clark claims the discovery of the elasticity of the foot; but this we cannot acknowledge, as previous writers, and amongst them Mr. Freeman, had spoken of it in their works before Mr. Clark's appeared. At the same time it is very probable that Mr. Clark gained his knowledge on the subject from personal dissections, and not from the works of others, and much credit is due to him for strenuously enforcing the expansive principle. ON THE FOOT OF THE OX. The following essay on the foot of the ox was written by the author some years since, whilst he was a student of the Veterinary College. The subject was proposed by the Editors of The Veterinarian as a prize essay, an..