LA FOSSES EXPERIFNCE. 489 



success was most astonishing, though no more than might, 

 on reflection, be anticipated. 



'These short shoes, thin at the heels, have caused the 

 horses to walk on their frogs, which are their points of 

 support, and those which were lame at the heels are sound 

 again ; those also whose inside quarters were contracted, 

 bent over, and split (sandcrack), have been cured. It has 

 been the same with horses whose quarters and heels have 

 been contracted [encastele) : these have been widened, and 

 have assumed a proper shape. The same may be said of 

 those whose soles were convex {conible), and which went 

 lame with long shoes. My method has also preserved 

 those horses which had a tendency to thrush {vulgo, " fie ") 

 and canker of the frog {crapaud). 



' If the horse be shod with calkins, there is a great space 

 between the frog and the ground ; the weight of the body 

 comes on the calkins ; the frog, which is in the air, cedes 

 to the weight ; the tendon is elongated ; and if the horse 

 makes a violent and sudden movement, the rupture of that 

 organ is almost inevitable, because the frog cannot reach 

 the ground to support it in the very place it ought to ; 

 and if the tendon does not break, the horse is lame for a 

 long time from the great extension of the fibres, some of 



which may have been ruptured If the horse be 



shod without heels to his shoes (epoiiges), the frog, which 

 carries all the weight of the horse's body, yields at each 

 step, and returns again to its original form. The tendon 

 is never in a state of distraction ; its fibres are no longer 

 susceptible of violent distension during a sudden move- 

 ment. I will go so far as to assert, that rupture of the 

 tendon will never occur on a flat pavement ; if it does, it 



