458 
turner’s treatise on the 
coffin and smaller pastern bones, which certainly are not always 
found—which are often seen in general contraction without navi¬ 
cular disease, and which are seldom seen in a hoof of nearly circular 
form, although the navicular disease may have made the greatest 
ravages. And then, perhaps, he will not, in his mode of treat¬ 
ment, urge that which, to say the best of it, is a little mysterious— 
giving exercise so early, and increasing the pressure and injury 
occasioned by that exercise on a membrane naturally sensitive, 
and that sensibility heightened a thousand fold by inflamma¬ 
tion, by lowering the heels and shortening the toe. 
Mr. Turner’s account of his first adoption of the one-sided 
nailed shoe y for the prevention or removal of contraction, has so 
much of the candour, and straightforwardness, and professional zeal 
of the man about it, that we cannot refrain from extracting it. 
“ A short time ago, in the hurry of practice, my attention was 
suddenly attracted by a most extraordinary alteration having 
taken place in the shape of the fore feet of a horse seven years 
old, which had literally changed from an oblong to a circular 
shape in the short period of a few months, although exposed to 
quick work daily on the hard road, and without any person 
being aware that means had been resorted to for effecting such a 
purpose. 
“ On my investigation as to the cause of this important benefit 
which the feet had somehow or other derived, it turned out that 
I had been consulted by the owner of this horse, some months 
previously, respecting his being a determined cutter before, both 
his ancles being then raw from the repetition of blows. His feet 
were exceedingly contracted; but I consider it necessary to ac¬ 
knowledge the horse was perfectly free from lameness, and that 
my assistance was only required by the owner relative to the 
cutting. Accordingly, I gave my own shoeing-smith directions 
to shoe both fore feet to the extreme, against cutting , as fol¬ 
lows :—A shoe of moderate substance, and of equal thickness 
toe and heels, to be nailed at the toe and outside quarter, with 
an extra nail or two at the outside heel, but not a single nail to 
be driven or hole punched in the inner half of the shoe , except 
one a little inclined to the inside toe ; and all the inner edge of 
the shoe, that otherwise would have been fullered, to be bevelled 
