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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    cumstances with considerable anxiety of mind, an experiment for ascertaining it suggested itself,—that of taking casts in plaster from any sound, healthy foot, under the influence of the shoeing process, and repeating those casts from one period to another, and comparing them with each other; they would then afford me the particulars of change that might take place, and the quantum of diminution of the foot in a given time. Other circumstances unfolded themselves, that were not looked for, as the experiment proceeded, of which we shall now present the reader with the details, so as fully to establish the important fact of the mischievous effects of iron and nails, or of common shoeing rather, upon the horse’s foot. The broaching an opinion so at variance with common apprehension and prejudice, would, I well knew, without the clearest evidence, only serve to draw upon me the ridicule of the world, that I was well pleased when I found the thing could be made demonstrable ; for how little the fact 1 am about to disclose was really felt or suspected before by the writers on these subjects, the very numerous works of my contempo- raries will sufficiently show. And I may observe, it was during a painful research in making shoes to be put on without nails that I first began to perceive it; and what is extraordinary, the general principle on which hinged the phenomenon still remained unknown to me for more than a twelvemonth after discovering the true cause of contraction. Any one would very naturally infer that, if I was employed in making shoes to avoid the nails, it was because I saw the ill effects of the nails upon the foot,—no such thing: I had at this period no dis- tinct apprehension of it; and it was to avoid the use of shoeing- smiths and their mal-practices, and in order that every man might be, or by his servant at least, his own shoer,—so near may we be to a thing, and not perceive it.* And when the thought first came over * The great difficulty of entertaining a new principle will not appear surprising if we reflect that for two thousand years the simple fact of fluids rising to their level, though