A FEW REMARKS ON CHRONIC LAMENESS IN 
HORSES’ FEET 
One of the most important subjects connected with the study of veterinary medicine 
and surgery, is lameness in the feet of horses: important for two reasons, first, because 
the diseases producing lameness have generally been misunderstood in some respects, 
concerning their causes and character, and secondly on account of their frequency and 
the great depreciation in values and loss of usefulness in consequence thereof. 
It would be difficult perhaps to calculate the immense damage arising from lame¬ 
ness in horses, in a large city like New York, Philadelphia or Boston every year, but 
they who are conversant with the subject know that it would reach to a large sum, one 
which would astonish people who know but little about it, or have given it no thought 
whatever. 
During all the time the veterinary art has received attention from educated men, 
from its earliest records up to the present time, we learn that the chief maladies affect¬ 
ing the serviceable working condition of horses, have existed in their limbs and feet. 
Unfortunately however the investigation of early veterinarians were not pursued in the 
right direction, or productive of good results, either in gaining correct information con¬ 
cerning the physiology and pathological condition of the structures involved, or in the 
prevention and treatment of the diseases causing lameness. 
A slight review of a few of the teachings of early authors will show that a large 
amount of error has been written and generally accepted, while at the same time it will 
furnish but a little that is really useful or even practicable from which benefit may be 
derived. As a general thing we find that most authors who have treated the subject 
of foot-lameness, have had some hobby* either in regard to the physiology of certain 
structures involved, with relevant methods of paring the feet and applying shoes ; or in 
favor of curious and uncommon shapes and kinds of shoes and methods of nailing them 
on ; all of which were intended to assist nature by accommodating or aiding some 
supposed function of the foot, or some of its parts, to perform that function with greater 
ease and at less expense to the foot, than it could do without such mechanical aids ; 
but all of which have failed to accomplish what was intended by their originators, on 
account of possessing but few if any other merit than that one of novelty, from misap¬ 
plication and for other reasons apparent to all familiar with the experiments, their 
practical application and known results. 
We learn for instance that Colman was the cause at one time of having certainly 
one-half of the horses in London, shod with shoes thick at the toe and thin at the heels, 
something in the same manner as we see horses shod at the present time with what are 
known as the “Goodenough” shoes for the purpose of producing frog-pressure, it being 
taught that this pressure upon the frog would brace the heels open when the foot was 
trod upon and prevent what was known as contraction of the hoof. 
But a little time developed that pressure applied to the frog at the expense of correct 
position of the foot and limb, was in itself a cause of other diseases than that it was 
