274 DISEASES OF THE HORSE’S FOOT 
have practised with considerable success—namely, that of 
forced exercise. It appears to have been first brought into 
ominence by Mr. Broad, of Bath, and the two terms 
vv ‘Forced Exercise and Rocker Shoes’ and ‘ Broad’s Treat- 
ment’ have come to be synonymous. 
The Broad shoe is a shoe with a web of quite twice the 
thickness of the animal’s ordinary shoe, and has this web 
gradually thinned from the toe backwards until at the 
heels the shoe is at its thinnest (see Fig. 119). 
The excessive thickness of the shoe serves two purposes. 
It allows of the requisite amount of slope being given to the 
web, and so enables the animal readily to throw himself 
back on to his heels, a position in which, as we have already 
Fic. 119.—SzaTep Rocker Bar Sor (Broap’s) For TREATMENT 
oF LaminirIs. 
indicated, he obtains the greatest ease. It also minimizes 
to some extent the effects of concussion. 
With forced exercise, as practised by Mr. Broad, this shoe 
is first applied, and the animal afterwards made to walk 
upon soft ground, or even upon the roadway, for a half an 
hour to an hour and a half three times a day. 
For our own part, we consider the shoe to be almost if not 
quite superfluous, so far as its influence upon the progress 
of the disease is concerned. We therefore dispense with it, 
and have the animal exercised in his ordinary shoes. To 
do this, the patient has sometimes to be severely flogged 
into taking the first few steps. After that progress gradually 
becomes easier. 
It has been said to be cruel. In so far as we knowingly, 
and of set purpose, occasion the animal pain, cruel it 
