Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/570

 views with regard to the elasticity of the foot, and nothing could be more destructive to that organ than the adoption of the rules he lays down for its management. To carry them out was simply to produce the diseases he attributes to other causes; and it is difficult to understand how Mr Youatt, who was in many respects an intelligent veterinarian, should so far commit himself to the emission of opinions which a little investigation would have shown to be without the slightest foundation. His directions, appearing as they did in a work of a popular character, and which was to be found on nearly every horse-owner's book-shelf, must have done an incalculable amount of injury, and which could scarcely be compensated for by the correctness of other details he gives on the matter of shoeing.

For more than fifty years, and even up to the present day, the elasticity, or lateral-expansion and sole-descent mania, may be said to have proved the curse of horseflesh, and the bête noire of farriery. The hoof was mutilated in every possible manner to favour this all but undemonstrable idea; and the purblind individuals who resorted to these practices evidently could not see the damage they were inflicting, and which became all the more serious the more exaggerated their expansion theory was developed. Nearly all the ills the horse's foot was liable to, it was believed, were due to the restraint the unyielding shoe imposed upon the lower border of the hoof, as well as the constriction caused by the nails. To remedy these every imaginable device was tried; but nearly all of them were as unreasonable as they were unfruitful. Such had been the wonderful productions of Coleman