NAVICULARTHRITIS. 143 



wearing their hoofs unpared down, with their frogs thereby ele- 

 vated above the ground, shrunk and shrivelled, and probably dis- 

 eased as well, and all from want of pressure in one direction, viz. 

 from the ground, and from having too much pressure in another 

 direction, viz. from being squeezed between the high and con- 

 tracted heels of the overgrown hoof. The penetrant eye of Cole- 

 man discovered not the evil alone but the cause of the evil. 

 " Nature," said he, " formed the frog of the hoof large and pro- 

 minent, in order that it might receive pressure every time the 

 animal places his foot upon the ground ; but here, the smith, in 

 his ignorance and presumption, has cut it away, suffering the heels 

 to grow down far below it, and the consequence has been de- 

 generation and disease of the former, and contraction of the latter." 

 From that moment Coleman commenced his reform in the practice 

 of shoeing, and his first efforts — as indeed were his last — were 

 directed to giving pressure to the frog. And a great reform he 

 in this manner effected. Nay, through such practical reform he 

 lived to see — wherever shoeing was " properly" conducted — what 

 he had all along predicted would one day be the case — the pre- 

 vention of contraction : his words, in his lecture on the subject, 

 being — " If a three-year-old colt were constantly to be brought 

 here — to the Veterinary College — to be shod, I feel convinced he 

 would never have his feet become contracted,'' 



In getting rid of contraction, however, Coleman did not, nor did 

 any body else, nor was any one likely to, foresee what was to hap- 

 pen. That was left for Mr. Turner to discover — or, at all events, 

 to make known. And the circumstance, now explained — though 

 not, that I am aware of, explained before — of navicularthritis being 

 an uncommon disease so long as contraction was a common one, 

 but becoming comparatively frequent the moment contraction was 

 put all but an end to, accounts for Coleman viewing the solitary 

 preparation in the Museum at the Veterinary College as a speci- 

 men of " rare disease," as well as for the unlikelihood there conse- 

 quently was of navicularthritis being discovered in days when the 

 dissection of morbid parts was pursued with nothing like the dili- 

 gence which has marked its prosecution in later times. 



Is pressure to the frog, then, a cause of navicularthritis? — Not 



