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.

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    The outside quarter of the foot, referred to in the plate by the let- ter c, it will be readily observed, is more bulging, or describing a wider circuit exteriorly than the inner quarter is observed to do. The purposes of nature in this unexpected difference of construction appear to be to widen the basis of the foot, and increase its surface of bearing upon the ground, by which it is rendered more secure and firm; and the bearing also thus divided over more points, is made easier to the ani- mal without incurring any danger of cutting the opposite leg, as would be the case if such enlargement had taken place on the oppo- site side. The horn of this outer quarter is also something stouter than that of the inner, which, together with its greater extent, ena- bles the workman usually to place a nail more in this quarter in fixing on the shoe than in the opposite one*. We shall only further observe on this part, that as it approaches * In describing this part of the hoof, we have, fn compliance with first impressions and custo- mary habit, considered it as conical. It would not be right to quit this object without observing that this notion is by no means correct: much use in handling the hoof has taught us otherwise, though we have been cautious in stating it at once5 for it is our wish to make these remarks intel- ligible to every class of readers ; so that we studiously avoid the unnecessary use of the technical phraseology of the art, so equally we would desire to avoid the use of terms belonging to other sciences that are not in use in these arts. There appears, however, no other course of communi- eating our ideas than by sacrificing our wishes in this respect: for the sciences are so interwoven that they cannot be understood sometimes but by each others aid: and to leave incorrect ideas would be more culpable than such a step. The figure of this part of the horse’s hoof, then, is truly a cylinder very obliquely truncated, its truncated extremity brought to the ground. To show this distinctly, I exhibited formerly in some discourses I gave on this subject a cylinder of brown paper, and this I cut obliquely till it gave the figure of a hoof of any slope in front, so that at a distance it could not be known from the actual hoof: it is also readily seen by taking a car- penter’s square, and placing one limb beneath the foot across the quarters, then sloping the other backwards against the quarter parallel to the front, when the edge of the iron -would be found parallel to the side of the hoof. In many feet there is, however, a very small spread downwards, but less than could be imagined from a transient view of the foot: this understood, will lead the sculptor and veterinarian to a more just conception of the figure of this part: it is indeed its cy- lindrical form that causes the back line of the hoof at tire heels to slope in the same course as the front line of the toe.