Hippodonomia, or the true structure, laws, and economy, of the horse's foot: also podophthora, or a ruinous defect in the principle of the common shoe detected ... with a proposition for a new principle of shoeing / [Bracy Clark].

  • Clark, Bracy, 1771-1860
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hippodonomia, or the true structure, laws, and economy, of the horse's foot: also podophthora, or a ruinous defect in the principle of the common shoe detected ... with a proposition for a new principle of shoeing / [Bracy Clark]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I have also observed that we may lay these parts open to great ad- vantage, by a vertical section of the hoof through both commissures, when also may be seen some remarkable circumstances in the appa- ratus attending the tendons and shuttle bone and its attachments. Having given the horny parts of the Horse’s foot, with the soft and the semi-soft parts, we shall now, contrary to our first intentions, give the bones also, that we may present the work in a tolerably complete state, as far as these organs are at least necessary to be known for the illustration of the shoeing art, the most important and most difficult branch of our profession. It will cause the present part in the number of its pages to exceed any former one; but we trust the - - «T ~ ' ——————— the amount of the water or lymph contained in said parts, which would inevitably be forced off' in a heat of from four to five hundred degrees, the heat of boiling oil. The experiment exhibits a remarkable ignorance in the analysis of animal substances, for even had fat existed it would not have been at all detected by these means. This egregious nonsense was not noticed in my former edition, nor would it have been in this, had I experienced the smallest attention or encouragement from this Professor of the art, whose labour it has been by false and artful insinuation, and some- times pretended attacks, to misrepresent my writings to the class, and destroy the reputation of their author, and from them with the public ; no doubt at times pre- tending to praise him, but only the more securely to conceal his purpose, under the disguise of candour and fair conduct. The Lancet, and other Periodicals of the day, exhibit a complete proof of the untenable nature of his doctrines, even where he thought himself most secure ; so that of what value can a diploma be, that so many are seeking so anxiously, from such hands, when nearly all that he and his partner have taught has been totally overturned. The establishment was a noble one, in which he had no hand, but has abused it in many ways, till it is made a point of obstruction to the very advancement of that art it was intended to foster and improve ; indeed we may say, as we once before stated, in the history of the advancement of Horse knowledge, that “ ^ie sacre(l Path of knowledge in the arts and sciences as well also as of religion herself, cannot be left too free;” professorships and stipends, especially when large, and patronage soon from sordid interests, choke the fair avenues of their progress and retard their courseshould they not therefore be so formed as not to tempt the aspirings of the ambitious or the graspings of the avaricious ? A body of men freely chosen from among the profession itself, should, after due examination, grant diplomas to those in whom the public may have confidence, when the greatest utility and satis- faction would be found by employing such votaries of this profession about their horses.