250 
AN ESSAY ON SHOEING. 
the sensitive foot with the nail not requiring comment at this 
place. Notwithstanding the whims and caprices in horse-shoe- 
ing that have prevailed from generation to generation, this 
salutary practice has never been out of fashion — never discarded. 
It remains to this day the shoe of the city, and prevails at all the 
most extensive and scientific forges at the west end. 
The next in importance, as one of the great principles in shoe- 
ing, consists in a scientific distribution of the nails for affixing 
the shoe to the foot — (I am not alluding to the avoidance of prick- 
ing the quick) — I mean the guarding against that most insidious 
and more crying evil, the imprisonment of the elastic foot within 
a rigid fetter by the conjoint effects of bar-iron and nails. 
You will suppose, Gentlemen, that I am about to touch upon 
the present prevailing practice of side-nailing . Of such para- 
mount importance do I consider it, that I fearlessly assert before 
this audience, and the whole body of the profession, that, in 
applying the shoe, the quick having been avoided by the nails, 
and the sole freed from pressure in its descent by a concave shoe, 
the “ unilateral nailing” not only stands first as the great conser- 
vative or grand principle in horse-shoeing, but that all the others 
are secondary or tributary to it. How are you to derive the full 
expansive benefit of that important agency, frog pressure , if you 
have fixed the heels by opposing rivets, as in common shoeing ? 
The horny sole may descend in the old common nailing, under 
the combined impressions of rapid motion, the animal’s weight, 
and that of his rider, upon a resisting JVHAdam’s surface: but 
mark you, Gentlemen, my question is, Can it, for a continuance, 
descend enough after you have fixed the quarters so as to preserve 
the delicate organization of the interior from concussion ? Does 
its descent even approach to what it would be in the unfettered 
unshod foot? 
The fetter of the nails by the old system of shoeing, in driving 
them as near to the points of the heels, for security’s sake, as that 
shallow part of the crust would admit of, although sound and ra- 
tional upon the principles of carpentry, is the most serious outrage 
that shoeing has ever inflicted upon the internal foot ; and it is as 
insidious as it is mischievous, never manifesting itself until deeply 
rooted. But when a flagrant error is committed by shoeing in any 
other way, the animal returns lame immediately from the forge, 
or gives decided indications of uneasiness within two or three 
days. It has been well remarked by my brother, Mr. Thomas 
Turner, for a series of years, that the very first indication of con- 
traction is an altered direction of the external fibres of the wall, 
by their gradually losing their natural obliquity and approaching 
a perpendicular : and a most important index this is, in obscure 
