OR CONTRACTED SINEWS. 577 



the old miferable ignorance of putting a pat- 

 tin-fhoe on the found foot, in a cafe of the 

 mod palpable debility, requiring every pof- 

 fible alleviation from weight or labour. In 

 ray many converfations with old Snape, who 

 had mod probably put on hundreds of pattin- 

 flioes, I could never difcover that he had any 

 correal ideas of their ufe. It was fimply — oh ! 

 turn him off with a pattin-fhoe. The whole 

 virtue was lodged in the fhoe, not in the ration- 

 ality of the thing ; the light precifely, in which 

 people generally view a receipt, as it is called, 

 lor a cure, one of the mod fuperlative vehi- 

 cles of folly and deception, and by w^iich even 

 people of education, who have not turned their 

 attention to the pliilofophy of medicine, are 

 frequently gulled. I had lad year a hackney 

 mare Oiewn me, which had worked fome years, 

 and in the back finews of which, according to 

 my ideas, heads and fingers endowed with a 

 moderate portion of fenfe and feeling mud ine- 

 vitably difcover a mod fufficient caufe of lame- 

 nefs : but the farrier, who had been forty years 

 in bufinefs, finding httle heat and no tendon in 

 the legs, declared the mare found in thofe parts, 

 and that the lamenefs was in her feet, and would 

 be mended by work. Her feet were however 

 in a very good date, and the mare, a favourite, 

 has proved to be incurable, obvioufly, I think, 

 VOL. II. ' p p from 



