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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    PLATE XII, OR SUPPLEMENTARY PLATE. Fig. I. represents a sectional slice of the horse’s foot longitudinally, and over the commissural ridge of the sole, through one of the podal globes, which is shown by this preparation to be made up, or constituted, of a succession of foliations of thin cartilages, opposed in their direction, and incurvated reciprocally, and thereby forming an irregular sort of flattened globular body lying within the upright lateral cartilages, whose superior incurvation partly covers them over ; together they sustain the skin of these posterior parts of the foot, and afford that plump rounded appearance which these parts present exteriorly to the eye. A dense, stout, glossy membrane connects together these incurvated processes of the podal globes, and envelopes them, and then rising upwards, extends itself over the reflexed upright lateral cartilages, and is also covering them. This membrane has been divided by the knife, between these foliations of cartilage, in order to show their figure more conspicuously, in its being retracted by drying. Here also is seen in this preparation the part I have called the Stratiform process, c, which coming from the lateral cartilage, and diminishing as it proceeds to the interior, is passing over the commissural ridge to enter into the cavity of the horn-furch, and there to form its internal capsule, which is invested externally by the kerapoia, or secreting membrane of the horn of the furch. Interiorly it is giving out the cartilaginous partitions one above another, which we have called the substrated layers, and which are seen more conspicuously in fig. 2. a, is the coronet bone; b, the coffin bone; which have been removed to save trouble of repre- sentation: n, is the shuttle bone; on which inferiorly is seen a singular spot of erosion, or ul- ceration, h, which has the appearance of communicating with the anterior surface of the tendon behind it, viz., the perforans tendon. This erosion appears to be the effect of a violent pressure upward of the horn-sole against these tender parts especially in motion, causing irritation, and at length, absorption—one of the dire effects of nail shoeing. Though engaged for more than forty years in frequent dissection of these parts, it is the first time that I have met with this singular disease, to which a frequency has been insinuated that is altogether untrue, in order for some sinister purpose, (perhaps to stifle, disguise, and conceal, as it would appear, the general contraction, hardening, and injury to the hoof and whole interior of the foot) in a publication fraught with much disinegnuousness, illiberality, and falsehood; and which, though fully answered and refuted in each separate essay as it appeared, is shamelessly brought again before the public as though intact. This miserable effect of the shoeing was indeed first seen and described by my esteemed friend W. Moorcroft. See Calcutta Journ. 1819. The actual presence of this erosion can only be known by dissection after death, that any predication of it must be little better than charlatanism. Where it is suspected to exist, the removal of all shoeing whatever, the setting the parts at perfect liberty, a run at grass, for at least a twelvemonth, where the refreshing herbage and the cooling sod to the feet, would pro- bably restore the parts to their pristine condition. A horse however under treatment, might be used during the cure, that is, as much as his natural hoof would afford of work, or de- fended only by leather, or by iron-defended socks, or a paratrite. We are rather led to suspect that it is the hard commissural ridge of the sole that is the offending point chiefly in producing this disease, as being the most prominently opposed to these parts above; on which we propose hereafter further to enlarge in a separate publication, t, is a short, broad ligament, lodged in its peculiar recess, and opposite to which the disease also appears to be extending; this ligament is restraining the shuttle bone, and we call it for the present, the ligamentum nuciferum inferius, as being connected with the nut or shuttle bone, in order to distinguish so remarkable a part; u, being the ligamentum nuciferum superius. This preparation being but a thin slice, gives no appearance hardly of the globular character of the part, or of the limber, gelatinous mass surrounding it, which is nearly lost also by drying.