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TWENTY-SEYENTH ANNUAL MEETING 
covery in regard to a horse’s foot and resulted in benefit to that horse, is supposed 
and claimed to be applicable to all horses’ feet. They know that the horse’s foot 
is more or less intricate in its structure, but look on it as an important article 
much as they would upon a patent collar or toe weight, which has given a 
good result in one case, and therefore they suppose it should in all. Before com¬ 
parative anatomists and practical veterinarians, however, no apology is needed 
for reviewing their knowledge of the foot, or adding any detail, however small, to 
it. 
The anatomist, who might have been a Darwin or a Leidy of his race ages ago, 
when the four-footed animals first came upon the earth, could certainly never 
have conceived that the free-moving ten bones of the carpus or tarsus, and the 
multiple digits of the animals of their day, could be diminished to a single toe, 
and it serve as a useful member, finding support only by its distal extremity. 
We, as practitioners, are too apt to overlook the importance which the remnants 
of the evolution in the horse’s foot bears on its practical troubles and diseases, 
and we too often fall into the habit of regarding the feet of one horse as struc¬ 
tures identical with those of another, which they are not. 
For convenience in thi3 paper, the word foot will be used, as meaning the 
“ surgical foot,” from the second phalanx and coronary band down, and will be 
qualified as the anatomical foot, if it is so meant. While the elements of the 
feet are the same in all the solipeds, it is important to review some of the ana¬ 
tomical and physiological peculiarities which allow the shape of a thorough¬ 
bred’s foot to appear like a cylinder, while that of a Clydesdale has the conforma¬ 
tion of a flat cone. 
Comparing the two third phalanges, it is seen that the transverse diameter 
of one from a flat-footed horse is much greater in relation to its antero-posterior 
and supero-inferior diameter, that the concavity of the plantar surface is much 
less, and that the basilar and retrossal processes stand out at an angle from the 
median line of the bone instead of lying almost parallel to it, as they do in the 
bone from a mule-footed horse. In the flat foot the articulation of the third 
phalanx with the second phalanx above is more shallow, and consequently ad¬ 
mits of a greater amount of lateral motion between the two bones. The differ¬ 
ence between the navicular bones of the two feet is only one of accommodation, 
except that in the flat foot the navicular is closer to the plantar surface and has 
greater freedom of movement. We recognize that the ligaments of flat feet have 
greater surface of attachment, and in the lymphatic animal are less dense and 
more extensible, thereby allowing a greater freedom of movement, but predis¬ 
posing to a greater amount of bone irritation if they are wrenched at their origin 
on the bone. The plantar cushion of the flat foot is larger in proportion to the 
size of the foot than in the high-lieeled foot, as in the former there is a greater 
divergence of the wings from the median line of the pedal bone. The walls ac¬ 
commodate themselves to the difference of relationship of the internal parts. 
The flat foot, in profile, is seen truncated at a more acute angle. The greater 
and wider frog sunk at the glomes of the heels nearer the ground renders in some 
cases the entire posterior part of the foot a soft cushion, holding up both quar¬ 
ters and bar, whereas, in feet of the opposite conformation, these latter must be 
considered as the important factors in the movement of the heels, while the frog 
plays a secondary part, acting as a passive support. In any horse the fore and 
