A series of original experiments on the foot of the living horse, exhibiting the changes produced by shoeing, and the causes of the apparent mystery of this art / By Bracy Clark.

  • Clark, Bracy, 1771-1860.
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A series of original experiments on the foot of the living horse, exhibiting the changes produced by shoeing, and the causes of the apparent mystery of this art / By Bracy Clark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    147/173 (page 132)
    The decline of the Roman empire soon after this period, and the obscurity which followed, occasioned the veterinary art, as an exclusive profession, to be again lost; and on the iron nailed shoe being brought into use, a few centuries afterwards, the smiths occupied with this practice became the only doctors of the horse, under the title of Fer- rers ; afterwards Fcrriers, and at length this was corrupted into the term Farriers, having for its origin the Latin ferr urn, iron. That the ancients defended their horses’ feet in this simple manner there can be! little doubt; and, as a sort of collateral confirmation of it, there is to be seen, in the collection of pastes or impressions from en- graved stones of the ancients now preserved in the British Museum, and formerly belonging to Baron Stosch, the representation of a soldier in the act of applying a defence of this description to the horse’s leg, at least the attitude he is in makes it probable that such is his object; he ap- pears kneeling down in front of the horse, with his right hand grasping the off leg, while another soldier standing by is holding up the other leg, bent backwards to the elbow, assisting him. And the above quo- tation from Apsyrtus affords indubitable proof that they applied their bands or ties about the shank, though it is probable about the fetlock and coronets also. Beringer imagines this soldier is applying the shoe of Broom twigs, the Sparteum opus of the Romans, which we should doubt very much, for the reasons that will be seen on a further inves- tigation of the nature of this sort of shoe ; it is more probable that he is fastening on the hippopedes by the ties or thongs above alluded to by Apsyrtus. To these leather socks for the feet of their horses, and especially mules, to render them more durable, they occasionally affixed plates of metal; sometimes iron was employed for this purpose, as these lines of Catullus sufficiently exhibit: “ Ft supinum animum in gravi derelinquere Cano, Ferream ut Soleam tenaci in voragine Mula.”—Cat. xvii. 23. For