shob;ing. 25 1 



destroying their utility and cutting off the supply of material necessary 

 to the foot's existence. If we could dispense with nails altogethei our 

 horses' feet would be better off. This, unfortunately, we apparently 

 can not do, but we have it in our power to minimize an evil which, at 

 present, at all events, we can not entirely avoid. 



There is one shoe, without some allusion to which an essaj^ of this 

 kind would be incomplete, namely, the "Charlier shoe," invented some 

 years ago by M. Charlier, a well-known veterinarian surgeon of Paris, 

 France, which has never, in my opinion, received either the attention or 

 trial its merits deserve. Common sense and science alike indorse it, and 

 were the system to become generally known in this country I venture to 

 assert that there is an extremely large number of cases in which it would 

 be found bctli appropriate and beneficial. For this reason I will briefly 

 describe it. The shoes used are about one-third the weight of an ordin- 

 ary shoe, and less than one-half the width. In preparing the foot for 

 shoe and sole, frog and bars are left, as they ought to be, absolutely 

 untouched, and a groove is cut, by means of a knife specially designed 

 for the wall, not high enough to reach above the sole level, and less than 

 the thickness of the wall in depth. Into this groove a narrow but thick 

 band of iron is sunk and nailed to the foot by means of four to six con- 

 ical-headed nails, the heads being countersunk in the shoe. The advan- 

 tage of this method of shoeing is that the frog, bars, and a portion 

 of the sole come to the ground exactly as if the foot were unshod, and 

 one and all participate in weight-bearing as it was obviously intended 

 they should, while the wall is protected from wear by the small rim of 

 iron let into its ground surface. 



I have used both the Charlier shoe and the tip in this country as well 

 as in the East Indies, and I am perfectly satisfied that in many respects 

 they are superior to any other model. They are infinitely lighter, the 

 nails are smaller and fewer in number; all steps in the right direction; 

 but the dominant superiority of the device consists in the fact that the 

 frog obtains pressure to the extent contemplated by nature, and in 

 the case of the Charlier tip particularly the exercise of its double 

 function as a buffer and dilator is absolutely untrammeled in any way 

 by the shoe. 



Finishing Touches. When the shoe has been fitted, the nails 

 driven, drawn up, and clinched, there should be nothing left to be done. 

 Very frequently, however, it is just at this stage that the incompetent 

 workman, in the most uncalled for manner, inflicts serious and lasting 



