THE FROG PRESSURE FALLACY. 
739 
I fear no consequences, and can shew no lenity. As it is a broad 
question, deeply concerning the welfare of our profession, let us 
not entertain it on narrow grounds, but with reference to its effects, 
past, present, and in future, on the horse himself, and also the 
public whom he serves. 
When Professor Coleman assumed the College chair some forty- 
five years ago, he found the subscribers but just recovering from 
the mistaken doctrine of his predecessor St. Bel, who had pro- 
mised the greatest advantages from adopting a concave ground 
surface with a horseshoe of the ordinary kind. 
No such good results had been realized, but in the baneful 
effects of common shoeing an evil of great magnitude had been 
long acknowledged to exist, and the public, and intelligent horse- 
men in particular, expected from the new Institution a speedy and 
certain relief. Both then, and for long after, we may perceive in 
the numerous books published, and plans proposed for the amelio- 
ration of the shoeing art, a sort of uneasy sensation of difficulty. 
The public were alert, but the schemers satisfied none but them- 
selves : there was a feeling of something wanting ; in fact, the 
glorious principle of expansion lay undiscovered and unknown, 
and without it the subject could not be understood or explained. 
At this juncture it was that Mr. Coleman, a speculative and 
unpractised individual, was placed by fortuitous circumstances in 
the prominent situation of Professor, a situation irresponsible in 
matters of doctrine and opinion, and long unchecked by rivalry of 
any kind. It may in fairness be added, that there was at first no 
light shining before him ; no one had then succeeded in explaining 
the mysterious evil of the iron shoe; and even his temporary 
colleague, Mr. Moorcroft, in a work replete with good sense, had 
only evidenced how little was known by the most accomplished 
veterinary surgeon of his day. 
Thus, the newly elected Professor was left to his own imagin- 
ings, and extremely unfortunate they proved to be. We doubt 
not that he consulted authorities, read Osmer, and Bracken, and 
Gibson, and cut up the foot, as his book plainly shews, without 
deriving much benefit. It was on an unlucky day that he lighted 
on the works of Lafosse, and, captivated by the Frenchman, thence- 
forth adopted his frog-pressure system with threefold violence. 
This author had some years before most strenuously recommended 
a thin-heeled shoe to bring pressure on the frog, and the plan had 
made considerable noise in Paris; but, finding their horses lamed 
and strained by the practice, the French, and even, I believe, the 
proposer himself, very wisely abandoned it as untenable. 
It was a cast-off French fashion, seized upon by our British 
Professor, and, like many a transplanted heresy in science, was 
