69 
REMARKS UPON ANTICIPATED ADVANCEMENT OF 
KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE FOOT OF THE 
HORSE, AND ITS DISEASES. 
By James Turner, M.R.C.V.S., Regent-street. 
My dear Mr. Editor,—I f an old veterinarian like myself, of 
forty years’ hard practice, and therefore, as a matter of course, 
about quitting and making way for a rising branch, can hail 
with thorough delight the announcement of a comprehensive 
work under the title of “ Treatise on the Organization of the 
Foot of the Horse , comprising the Study of the Structure , 
Functions and Diseases of that Organ , by M. Bouleyf how 
must the young and ardent practitioner be charmed by such 
prospect of enlightenment! 
From the reviews recently of the work in The Veterina¬ 
rian by your own able pen, we are told that the structural section 
is composed of minute anatomy, the detail in length unprecedented. 
Now, should it happily turn out that this talented author and 
eminent French professor prosecutes his work in the same com¬ 
prehensive spirit to the very end of the chapter, so that patholo¬ 
gical minutiae be found to vie with anatomical minuteness, then 
will the writer have conferred the greatest conceivable profes¬ 
sional boon; because, according to the existing state of veteri¬ 
nary literature in Europe, this is now the grand desideratum. 
For such an elaborate work, extensively illustrated, as a founda¬ 
tion upon a broad basis for future study, we shall owe to our 
French brethren a large debt. 
As a branch of science, how pre-eminently worthy is the foot 
of the horse to the devotion of talents of first-rate intellect in the 
elucidation of its mysteries, and the indication of sure guides 
for its conservation! As a specimen of animal mechanics, surely 
it is Nature’s masterpiece. Considering the very limited com¬ 
pass of the organ, there is nothing so strong, at the same time 
so delicate and sensitive. It can sustain the whole superin¬ 
cumbent weight of the animal to which it is appended, together 
with that of his rider, and alight upon the earth’s surface, moving 
at the velocity of a mile a minute, without injury to the internal 
organization. To disclose the economy and mechanism of this 
protective spring is the business of science. 
The generally received opinion in this country has been, the 
alternate expansion and contraction of the base of the foot; until 
of late years the London lecturers, together with a few army 
veterinary surgeons, have assailed this long-established theory, 
and denied the expansibility of the ground surface of the foot. 
