CONTRACTION. 465 



do we hear that contraction is among the evils which may then 

 befal them. Such being verily the state of the case, I cannot 

 help expressing my surprise, to read in Youatt's work such 

 passages as — *' The opinion is perfectly erroneous that con- 

 traction is the necessary consequence of shoeing." — " Shoe- 

 ing may be a necessary evil, but it is not the evil some 

 speculative persons supposed it to be," By way of " plain 

 proof" whereof, he states — " that although there are many 

 horses that are ruined or injured by bad shoeing, there are 

 others, and they are a numerous class, who suffer not at all from 

 good shoeing, and scarcely even from bad." Coleman said the 

 same thing ; — by shoeing properly, ab initio, contraction might 

 be prevented. And so far as pure contraction is the question, 

 there is, no doubt, truth in this. But it is not the whole truth. 

 The majority of cases of contraction are, as we shall by-and-by 

 see, cases of mixed contraction, such as are produced under the 

 influence of the shoe, and such, I may add, as without the shoe 

 we should most certainly, comparatively speaking, hear but 

 little complaint about. 



Pure Contraction does not produce Lameness. Cole- 

 man's mode of reasoning, derived from the works on_ farriery 

 before him, was, that hoof-bound or contraction of the hoof 

 caused pain and lameness, by squeezing the sensitive tissues of 

 the foot contained within it, after the manner that tight shoes or 

 boots squeeze our own feet. It is observable, however, that lame- 

 ness never sets in until inflammation has made its appearance. 

 A horse recently lame in a contracted foot will manifest heat in 

 that foot, shewing that the lameness is not the result of the 

 contraction — which may have been present long before — but of 

 the inflammation which has supervened upon the contraction. 

 Indeed, when we come to reflect upon the history of the case, 

 to consider how long a time the contraction has been, by imper- 

 ceptible degrees, coming on, and that the parts within the hoof 

 cannot fail, during this length of time, to have accommodated 

 themselves to the contracted space, as well by absorption as by 

 alteration of position, we can hardly suppose that lameness 

 would be consecutive on the contraction. Even the inflamma- 



VOL. IV. 3 o 



