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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    others, that it has added to the intricacy of it. Some horses are continually tripping without ever falling; others are bolder in their step and appear less affected, but fall at once and with more serious consequences; others are only brought to stepping shortly; others go wholly on the toe, as the shoe if examined evinces ; these arise from the same cause operating on different feet and different con- stitutions of the horse ; the autumnal season, from its weakening influence on horses, will subject them to feel it more, and render them at this season liable to more casualties, though no season is exempt. There is often, I have observed, much shyness in speaking of these things among men, for fear these errors should be imputed to a want of jockeyship ; and few inquiries are made about them for the same reason : no man likes to make inquiries about horses, for that would imply a want of knowledge. Another of the strong causes which have tended to keep this matter in obscurity, has been the great repugnance which individuals have to admit any thing which tends to diminish the value of their animal, especially if they had any intention of selling him ; therefore dealers and jockeys treated the defect in the lightest way possible, and even denied the truth of its existence. The fear also of being regarded as a bad horseman, and wanting address to keep the horse up, leads others to the same conduct of not admitting it. When, however, circumstances of this sort have not existed, it has not been difficult to get an avowal from reasonable persons of the truth of this position. And my own experience in riding very many horses has but rendered me too much a witness of this tenderness, and which by others less acquainted with the nature of it, has been often followed by consequences the most lamentable, and has never failed to lead to the early misery and premature destruction of the horse himself. If it was not so, why use rending bits and cruel irons, whips and spurs, to an animal that in a general way would be easily led by the smallest cord when in health and free from pain ? It is by #