2 
A. Z UN DEL. 
Sometimes “ hoof-bound ” is only a simple deformity, with¬ 
out lameness and without serious result. But in most cases, it 
constitutes a very serious affection, which renders many horses 
useless and almost without value. It is of more common occur¬ 
rence than is generally admitted, and gives rise to many other 
affections of the foot. Cases of lameness treated as located in 
the shoulder, or as navicular disease, are very often nothing but 
the result of commencing contraction of the heels. True navicu¬ 
lar arthritis and hoof-bouud are closely related. Whether the 
disease of the sesamoid sheath, arising primitively brings on the 
subsequent contraction ; whether the contraction already existing 
orives rise to the alteration of structure which constitutes the 
o 
disease so named, cannot always be determined. Hoof-bound was 
known in old times, and the oldest hippiatrics have proposed 
means to cure it. .Riders especially have studied it, because the 
disease is most common in tine saddle horses, whose feet are 
small. It is frequent in Turkish and Spanish horses, and ani¬ 
mals from the Pyrenean districts, but common horses are not 
exempt from it. 
H. Bouley describes two forms of the disease, the true and 
the pretended or false contraction. In the first, the hoof is 
very narrow, sometimes even concave on its lateral face, to such 
an extent that its antero-posterior considerably exceeds its trans¬ 
verse diameter; while at the same time its wall is more vertical, 
and the heels considerably higher than normal, and the foot looks 
like that of a mule, of which this is recognized as the normal 
appearance. In the false contraction, there is merely a diminution 
of the tranversal diameter of the horny box in its posterior parts, 
the foot being narrow and contracted at t!:e heels only. 
We prefer to recognize a total contraction where the whole 
foot is contracted, and is smaller than its fellow ; atrophied , so to 
speak ; consisting in a contraction of the quarter —when it is 
principally narrow in those quarters, the condition extending back 
to the heels—and a contraction of the heels when this is well 
marked from the quarters to the heels only. A coronary and 
a plantar contraction have also been designated, depending upon 
whether it occurs at the superior or inferior part of the foot, and 
