490 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



will be in the space between two paving-stones. Two 

 things clearly follow from what I have said — that it may 

 happen that the tendon achillis sustains all the different 

 degrees of violence that can be imagined, from total rup- 

 ture to the smallest abrasion of its fibres, which will cause 

 the horse to go lame ; and it is on the frog alone that all 

 these different degrees depend, as has been demonstrated 

 more particularly in the history of fracture of the navicu- 

 lar bone and the anatomy of the foot.' 



After enumerating all the objections urged against his 

 rational method of shoeing, and replying to them, he 

 concludes : ' My new shoeing, I repeat, has nothing to 

 oppose it but prejudice; anatomy, which has made 

 known to me the structure of the foot, has demonstrated 

 all its advantages, and experience has fully confirmed 

 them.' 



I regret extremely that our limits forbid my trans- 

 lating at greater length from this splendid monograph ; 

 but I hope that I have been able to some extent to show 

 that Lafosse's ideas on shoeing were founded on sound 

 anatomical and physiological principles, the result of 

 close observation and experience. And yet they appear 

 to have made but little progress in the face of the oppo- 

 sition offered by ignorant grooms and farriers, who were 

 incompetent to understand anything but the mere every- 

 day routine of the rapidly degenerating art ; and the pre- 

 judice of those amateur horsemen who, though the last 

 perhaps to take upon trust statements relative to other 

 matters, would yet believe everything told them by these 

 horse attendants and shoers. The farriers of Paris, indeed, 

 unanimously protested against the innovation two years 



