88 



theory and practice which I have yet to unfold in these pages 

 are so simple and so reciprocal each to the other, and so read- 

 ily demonstrable, that they verify and confirm each other. 



CONRACTION AS A MORBID CONDITION. 



THE REVIEWER REVIEWED. 



Professor Gamgee, senior, a distinguished equine foot-path- 

 ologist, or may I say hippedopathologist, in a reries of ably 

 written articles in the pages of the Edinburgh Veterinary Re- 

 view, some ten years since, endeavored to, and did to a certain 

 extent, revolutionize all the then prevailing opinions regarding 

 the various functions of the foot of the horse, and their relations 

 to the movements of the animal. 



The marked ability with which these questions were treated, 

 and the prestige which accompanied his name must have had 

 considerable influence upon the minds of every one who read 

 those articles, as they had upon mine. Indeed, at the present 

 time, those articles are being extensively quoted and their 

 author's name mentioned as the best English authority in some 

 of the Agricultural journals of this country. There being no 

 middle-ground of compromise ; no stand-point that would em- 

 brace the old and the new ; I forsook the old and embraced 

 the new. Mr. Gamgee became the apostle of a new dispensa- 

 tion in my estimation as regards " the foot and its func- 

 tions." But for a brief period only, for the new views were 

 contradicted daily by the facts and observations of experience, 

 nay more, by demonstrations as certainly truthful as "any 

 demonstration to be found in the pages of Euclid. Of course, 

 my whilom idol fell from its pedestal, and since then I pay 

 homage only at the shrine of facts, not ' going a cent'' upon the 

 authority of a name nor upon the sanctions that are supposed 

 to accompany " hair's grown gray ' in professional harness, if 

 they have not a solid backing of facts. 



