ON THE EXPANSION OF HORSES’ FEET. 
243 
the controversy.” But, let me ask, Sir, if any one who seriously 
denies an admitted doctrine in your pages ought to be surprised 
or offended at a reply from those who publicly support it? 
Whatever Mr. Morgan might expect, he may be assured that no 
one shall openly attack the principles that I advocate without 
hearing from me in answer; at the same time, it is by no means 
an agreeable task to refute a grave, point blank assertion by 
argument alone ; and I even suspect, if a liberal journal had 
existed in Harvey’s days, and any one had chosen directly to 
contradict the theory of the circulation, using good language, and 
appealing to the experience or rather the ignorance of his prede¬ 
cessors, that it would have required some time and pains to 
answer him to the satisfaction of the public. Thus, although 
the expansion of the horse’s foot has been heretofore admitted in 
The Lancet, the world at large are certainly not acquainted with 
it; and Mr. Morgan is secure from general censure, and meets 
with some believers, because his assertions fall in with established 
prejudice and received opinion. To comment at large upon the 
manner in which he has met my queries would occupy too much 
of your valuable space. He admits that horses’ feet are much 
wider when they come from grass than before, and because 
^‘they grow outwards.” Now, why do they not grow out¬ 
wards” when shod, for it is notorious that with common shoes 
they contract and grow in ? and, on the contrary, I can prove, by 
numerous feet, that with expansion shoes they grow to the natural 
width, and maintain it. What occasions this difference? In 
the latter case, the foot both grows and dilates naturally; in the 
former, its action and growth are impeded. It is a practical 
fact, observed by all the workmen, that feet, when shod with 
these shoes, furnish twice as much horn at the heels as before, 
and there is yet no instance of a horse becoming weak-heeled 
during their use. My second query he also admits in this man¬ 
ner, “ that horses’ shoes become bright at the heels, immediately 
under the crust, but not one atom beyond it,” (observe,) which 
would be the case did this contractile and expansive power 
really exist.” No, it would not be the case : did I not say, 
rubbed bright by the ineffectual attempts of the foot to expand 
in spite of the nails ?” and are we not both speaking of a common 
shoe, in which I say, the nails confine the foot’s action? In the 
very next paragraph he says, the nails are always placed suffi¬ 
ciently in the forepart of the foot to admit of this contraction and 
dilatation, did they exist.” Altogether, these passages strengthen, 
so far as his opinion can strengthen, what I said respecting the 
futility of placing the nails forward, under the idea of allowing 
motion to the heels; for though he says they are always suffi- 
