34G DADD'S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 



the use of tips, no one would deny their tendency the least to 

 interfere with the operations of the foot. If there be any horse- 

 shoe calculated to prevent contraction, and navicularthritis as 

 well, I feel no hesitation myself in pronouncing that horseshoe to 

 be the tip. In saying so much, I am fully aware that tip-shoeing 

 can not be introduced into general practice for reason of the roads 

 horses have to travel and work upon, and of the numbers of horses 

 having hoofs of too weak and brittle a fiber to stand work without 

 chipping and breaking and wearing too rapidly away. On horses, 

 however, whose hoofs are strong and hard enough, and whose 

 work is light enough to admit of their wearing tips for any length 

 of time, or in situations where the roads or parts of the country 

 they have to do their work upon enable them to wear tips con- 

 stantly, no wholly-shod horses' feet will ever bear a comparison 

 with theirs. 



Pressure to the frog. — Coleman's favorite prophylactic against 

 contraction (considering shoeing to be an indispensable evil) must 

 certainly be regarded as next in importance, as a preventive, to 

 getting quit of the shoe itself, or of part of it. The frog being 

 a body which in action operates in the expansion of the hoof, the 

 removal of it, or even the impairment of it, must, necessarily, give 

 facility to contraction. It therefore behooves us, in ordinary shoe- 

 ing, to look well to the preservation of the integrity of this im- 

 portant part of the foot. 



The cutting away of the bars in shoeing, through robbing the 

 hoof of a couple of stays operating against the closure of its heels, 

 conduces to its contraction. Nature gave the bars as a sort of 

 buttress against either heel of the hoof, to oppose its drawing in- 

 ward, while the frog, placed between the heels, is operating in 

 forcing them asunder ; consequently, if the bars be removed, the 

 expansive or counteractive powers of the hoof lose an agent they 

 can, in many cases, ill afford to be deprived of. 



The contracting effects of heat and drought on the hoof may he 

 guarded against by keeping the horse's stall free from ferment- 

 able litter, while the atmosphere of the stable is maintained cool 

 and unpolluted. The practice, also, of stopping horses' feet (or, 

 what I believe to be better, of wearing swabs in the stable) will 

 likewise tend to guard against the contracting effects of thest 

 agents. We now come to the 



Treatment of contracted feet. — The first thing to determine, when* 



