490 PARING THE SOLE, PARTIALLY. [BOOK III. 



foot to ground; and the wall having now no re- 

 sistance in the horny sole to keep it expanded, it 

 contracts and becomes shapeless and diseased. 

 Partial parings overmuch produce partial accidents 

 from without, and engender diseases within, which 

 have received a great number of names according 

 to the situation, but all having their origin in this 

 or some such injury, and all producing contracted 

 hoof and sole. The importance of avoiding this 

 baleful practice may be deduced from the great 

 anxiety of our ancestors to particularise, by so 

 many different names, this single disease of the sole 

 arising from contracted hoof. For, whenever con- 

 stitutional diseases fall into the foot, they never 

 affect the sole, or any part of the bottom, unless 

 attracted thither, and brought into baleful ac- 

 tivity by accidents or contraction of the hoof, by 

 reason of this paring and rasping away of the na- 

 tural defence. For example, inflammation of the 

 lungs affects the fore feet with fever and chest- 

 founder, whilst the like attack upon the urinary 

 organs affect the hind feet with thrush *. Those 



* Meaning of course the kidneys, ureters and bladder, with its 

 neck ; which latter is liable to disorders the bladder is not subject to. 

 But a very common and really very vulgar blunder prevails of dub- 

 bing the bladder alone with the whole title of the urinary organs ; 

 whereas the bladder has less to do with the formation of urine than 

 any of the other component parts of those organs ; nor is it the seat 

 of any disorder that is not first communicated to it from the kidneys. 

 Yet does the writer, who is admired as the author of Nimrod's 

 letters, fall into this double offence, when copying these three or fom 

 sentences into his long chapter on "foot lameness," which he does 



