NAV1CUL ARTHRITIS. 
185 
made his peculiar study, bringing to the task acknowledged talent, 
and having a field of observation before him in his army practice 
and college practice to test and work his theories upon, of no less 
ample dimensions than established character. Coleman found the 
horses of the cavalry — as indeed were the horses of the commu- 
nity at large in those days — shod with tbick-heeled clumsy shoes, 
wearing their hoofs unpared down, with their frogs thereby ele- 
vated above the ground, shrunk and shrivelled, and probably dis- 
eased as well, and all from want of pressure in one direction, viz. 
from the ground, and from having too much pressure in another 
direction, viz. from being squeezed between the high and con- 
tracted heels of the overgrown hoof. The penetrant eye of Cole- 
man discovered not the evil alone but the cause of the evil. 
“ Nature,” said he, “ formed the frog of the hoof large and pro- 
minent, in order that it might receive pressure every time the 
animal places his foot upon the ground ; but here, the smith, in 
his ignorance and presumption, has cut it away, suffering the heels 
to grow down much below it, and the consequence has been de- 
generation and disease of the former, and contraction of the latter.” 
From that moment Coleman commenced his reform in the practice 
of shoeing, and his first efforts — as indeed were his last — were 
directed to giving pressure to the frog. And a great amount of 
good he in this manner effected. Nay, by such wholesome re- 
form he lived to see — wherever shoeing was properly conducted — 
what he had all along predicted would one day be the case — the 
prevention of contraction : his words, in his lecture on the sub- 
ject, being — “ If a three-year-old colt were constantly to be brought 
here — to the Veterinary College — to be shod, I feel convinced he 
would never have his feet become contracted .” 
In getting rid of contraction, however, Coleman did not, nor did 
any body else, nor was any one likely to, foresee what was to hap- 
pen. That was left for Mr. Turner to discover — or, at all events, 
to make known. And the circumstance, now explained — though 
not, that I am aware of, explained before — of navicularthritis being 
an uncommon disease so long as contraction was a common one, 
but becoming comparatively frequent the moment contraction was 
put all but an end to, accounts for Coleman viewing the solitary 
preparation in the Museum at the Veterinary College as a speci- 
men of “ rare disease,” as well as for the unlikelihood there conse- 
quently was of navicularthritis being discovered in days when the 
dissection of morbid parts was pursued with nothing like the dili- 
gence which has marked its prosecution in later times. 
Is pressure to the frog, then, a cause of navicularthritis? — Not 
an immediate, but a predisponent cause. A foot with a sound 
