846 DADD'S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY 
the use of tips, no one would deny their tendency the least te 
interfere with the operations of the foot. If there be any horse- 
shoe calculated to prevent contraction, and navicularthritis aa 
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 cf 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 ss 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 
van, in many cases, ill afford to be deprived of. 
The contracting effects of heat and drought on the hoof may be 
juarded against by keeping the horse’s stall free from ferment- 
able litter, while the atmosphere of the stable is maintained cool 
ana 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 thea 
agents. We now come to the 
Treatment of contracted feet.—The first thing to determine, when 
