A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    37/296 (page 13)
    chap. I.] THE SHOE; ITS FORM. sound foundation without employing the desperate butteris, or even having recourse to the less offen- sive drawing knife. Thus it is each kind of foot should be treated—according to its different degree of strength or weakness. The shoe.—The superficies of the foot round the outside being now made plain and smooth, the shoe is to be made quite flat, of an equal thickness, all round the outside, and open and most narrow backwards at the extremities of the heels, for the generality of horses; whilst those whose frogs are diseased, either from natural or incidental causes, require the shoe to be wider backwards. Then, to prevent thisjto shoe from pressing on the sole of the horse, the outer part thereof is to be made thickest, and the inside gradually thinner. With such a shoe, it will be seen, the frog is ad- mitted to touch the ground, the necessity of which has been already shewn. Add to all this, the horse stands more firmly; his feet may be said to take firmer hold of the ground, having the same points of support as in the natural state. Osmers shoe is depicted in plate 1, fig. 1. Here, the reader will perceive, is a plain easy method of forming the shoe, agreeable to common sense and reason ; being strictly conformable to the anatomical structure of the parts, and therefore in accordance with the design of nature. A method so plain, that one would think nobody could have fallen into any other, or commit any mistake in an art, where nought more is required, than to keep in mind three things, viz.