528 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



One of his pupils, Bracy Clark/ to some extent 

 adopted his views, though in other respects he far out- 

 stripped him in exaggerating certain functions of the 

 foot, and devising means to aid those functions. With- 

 out the slightest compunction, apparently, he claims 

 the merit of having discovered the elastic properties of 

 the foot, and re-discovers various parts. His weakness, or 

 rather his mania, with regard to the horse's foot was 

 lateral expansion, and descent of the sole in progression. 

 This exaggerated idea so influenced his notions of shoe- 

 ing, that he spent several years endeavouring to prove that 

 shoes were unnecessary, and when at last forced to employ 

 this defence, he invented several to be attached to the 

 hoof without nails. The unyielding iron rim riveted to 

 the lower margin of the foot by rigid nails was to him the 

 only source of disease ; the shoe in common use, the un- 

 skilful nailing, the destructive paring, were but little to 

 blame ; the prevention of that heel 'movement tuhich resem- 

 bled the ivaving of an osier branch in the ivind when a 

 horse galloped, and ivhich contributed so much to the 

 rapidity of movement, luas the sole cause. The nailless 

 shoe, however, was too complicated, and to remain secure 

 on the hoof had to be as immovably fixed as the nailed 

 one; so a jointed shoe was invented, identical in every 

 respect with that of Caesar Fiaschi, and so often spoken of 

 by writers subsequent to that marechal. This shoe was 

 useless, and could no more facilitate the lateral expansion 

 and contraction, even had it existed to the degree Bracy 

 Clark imagined, than the ordinary one. With the joint 



' A Series of Original Experiments on the Foot of the Living 

 Horse. London, 1809. 2nd Edit., 1829. 



