Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/478

 and curled upwards, probably for a foot the back tendons of which were contracted, and caused the horse to walk on the point of the toe (fig. 179).

In Germany, the first veterinary treatises published in which shoeing is mentioned are those by Albrecht, des Kaiser Friederich huffschmid;' Hörwart von Hoherbburg; and Seuter. There does not appear to be anything novel on the subject in these works, beyond what we have already epitomized from the Italian writers.

In 1598 appeared the excellent treatise of Carlo Ruini, a Senator of Bologna, on the anatomy and diseases of the horse; in which the maladies and defects of the feet were specially considered, and in a manner truly wonderful, for that time. Indeed, his instructions for the relief or cure of many foot maladies by shoeing are repeated in modern days. From his descriptions, we learn that the cruel and unscientific fashion of opening the heels, as it is termed, and paring the soles until the horn was quite thin, as well as shoeing with high calkins, was producing those effects with which we are so familiar now-a-days. His treatment of contracted heels consisted chiefly in applying lunette, or thin-heeled shoes, to allow the posterior parts of the hoofs to come in contact with the ground; and also to employing shoes with clips at the inner angles of the heels to grasp the inflection of horn, named the 'bars,' so as to press them outwards—a mode of expansion still very common on the