LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
62 
rinary writer, I find it to be a subject calling for a somewhat 
extended consideration. So common is frush, that, if ever there 
was a disease that could be called universal among horses, this 
may be said to be the one. Everybody’s horse has a frush, 
and yet nobody appears to be concerned about the matter. 
Horses, in general, seem to go as well with frushes as without 
them ; hence the reason of so little or no notice being taken of 
their presence : added to which, the circumstance affords a 
pretty convincing proof that the judge who, in former times, 
pronounced frush to constitute unsoundness, erred most egre- 
giously in his fiat justitia. 
A Frush is not to be accounted Unsoundness unless 
it produces lameness, which it rarely does. A horse having an 
ordinary frush will go as far, and as well — save that he may 
perhaps at times “ drop” from treading upon a stone — as one 
whose frogs are in a normal condition ; and therefore cannot in 
reason be regarded as unsound. And besides, were a frush to 
be viewed as unsoundness, there would be perhaps more unsound 
than sound horses in the country; in fact, hardly anybody 
would possess a sound horse. But 
Frushes are not so common now-a-days as they were 
some years ago. This is one of the fruits of an improved practice 
of shoeing; though so long as shoeing shall exist in any thing like 
its present form, supposing there were no other cause for the dis- 
ease, we should still have frushes. Constituted as the frog is, both 
as regards its own structure and its relation to other parts of 
the foot, it is quite impossible it can, in the state of constriction 
in which the whole foot is held by the shoe, perform to the full its 
natural functions ; and being unable to do so, the hoof gradually 
contracts and shrinks, in spite of every contrivance through 
shoeing to prevent it ; and though, by very good management 
on the part of the smith, and little proneness to such affection 
on the part of the foot, frushes are in some instances kept 
aloof, the frog is still too apt to become, in the course of time, a 
shrunk, sharp, narrow body, meanly comparable to what it, in 
the colt’s foot, originally was. The observation of this fact it is 
that has led to the development of one of the 
Causes of Frush, and that, too, the most general one. The 
frog was given to the foot for important purposes ; and Nature 
has so ordained in this, as in all other organised bodies, that, 
unless those purposes be fully carried out, it cannot maintain its 
original state of development. Diminished function entails 
diminished form ; the same volume of structure is found not to 
be required ; the body falls away under the decrease of demand 
upon it ; and in the end becomes “ beautifully less,” or else 
actually diseased. The late Professor Coleman’s mind was fully 
