Horses and roads/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
Fashion has of late led our ladies into the habit of wearing very high heels to their boots; and, to make things worse, they are placed, not under the ball of the heel, but ahead of it—that is to say, in a part which was not intended by nature to take their full weight at every step. Medical men tell us that since this became the fashion, hysteria is largely on the increase, and also that many other illnesses may be traced to the same cause. Fortunately, ladies can take off their boots when they come indoors (and they avail themselves of the chance), to put on others of different construction. From this the horse is debarred.
Medical men, as physiologists, are able to judge to a great extent as to the value or non-value of the foregoing remarks upon the horse’s foot and its shoe; they, at least, have no excuse for tacitly admitting that grooms and farriers should have any advantage over them. Perhaps some of them may think it worth while to pick up their horses’ feet and examine them, and turn things over in their minds. Some of them will admit that they have become ‘groovey’ to an extent that is inexcusable, especially in men of science. Medical men are all masters of comparative anatomy; and here is a good opportunity for them to bring it profitably into use.
All modern authorities on the matter are of opinion that most horseshoes are made too heavy; and when horses are shod by contract, or by the year, their shoes are made heavier still. Youatt, not by any means a modern authority, says that ‘an ounce or two in the weight of the shoe will sadly tell before the end of a hard day’s work.’ The American trotting horse, St. Julien, lately trotted a mile in 2 min. 12¾ sec, being half a second less than the best time of Rarus; and we are told that his shoes only weighed fifteen ounces each on the fore feet, and six ounces on the hind ones. Rarus, as was until lately the custom with American trotters, wore very heavy shoes; is it not possible that Rarus may have been the better horse of the two, but that he was too much assisted with iron by his friends? Besides the weight of an ounce or two ‘telling sadly before the end of a day’s work,’ there remains the evil that it tells permanently upon the horse’s legs. There is, perhaps, no modern authority that has not been explicit thereon; yet heavy shoes are still most generally in use, in spite, also, of the old proverb, ‘An ounce at the heels tells more than a pound on the back.’ Mr. Douglas tells us that he found by careful experiment that light shoes will wear longer than heavy ones. The contract farrier, by putting on heavy ones, is thus, as usual, wrong again; and he cheats himself this time—a very fitting judgment upon him. It is unfortunate that the rest of his mistakes do not equally recoil upon him. If this were the only mistake that he makes, it would prove that he takes no warning by experience, and makes no useful observation, when he incontinently, although in an overreaching way, actually mulets himself! This man will also put in extra nails, and make clips on the shoe to help the nails to keep on the exorbitant weight of iron; and all this means only so much extra mutilation of the hoof.
Horses in England are universally over-shod, as well as over-mutilated in the hoof; although, only last year, the author of the ‘Book of the Horse’ wrote, in a contemporary, ‘The general tendency of the age is to shoe as little as possible.’ This ‘tendency’ is very little apparent when people come to observe every horse they meet (as the writer does); although one notable exception (as there is to every rule) is to be found in the streets of London in the horses belonging to Mr. John Smither, East Smithfield. These horses do not slip about as much upon greasy pavements and asphalt as is the rule with other horses. At the present season, London observers may satisfy themselves on this score. This gentleman is owner of a considerable number of horses, and his cars and vans are to be continually met with in the City.
M. La Fosse was deeply impressed with the idea that less iron was required; and he boldly cut off one-half of the shoe—that is to say he maintained that a tip on the front half of the foot was all that was necessary. But, unfortunately, he spoilt a very bright idea in two ways—he recommended the heels of weak-footed horses to be pared (and this, of course, made them weaker), while he fastened on a tip, of about six inches in its entire length of iron, with eight nails. Horse-nails run from about one-eighth up to three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness. So he was inserting wedges amounting, in the aggregate, from one to one and a half inches in thickness, in six inches of horn, thus squeezing it into the space of five, or even four inches, and killing it from the clenches downwards and outwards.
Mr. Douglas says: ‘If the crust is closely examined with a microscope, its structure will be found to consist of a number of bristle-like fibres standing on end, but bearing diagonally towards the ground. From the particular longitudinal construction of the fibres, it follows that they will bear a great amount of weight so long as they are kept in their natural state. The crust so viewed resembles a number of small tubes, bound together by a hardened, glue-like substance. Whoever has seen a mitrailleuse gun, with its numerous barrels all soldered together, can form a very good idea of the peculiar structure of the crust (or wall), especially if they were likewise to imagine the tubes to be filled with a thick fluid, the use of which is to nourish and preserve them.’
If La Fosse had made a research of this kind, he would have perceived that, by his way of nailing, he was reducing the size of each tube by one-sixth; or, what is more probable, that he was entirely closing those nearest the nails, and compressing those that lie half way between each pair of nails. How, then, could the ‘thick fluid which is to nourish and preserve them’ circulate when it arrived at the nails? And what, therefore, was to nourish the prismatic-shaped portion that lies in front of the nails? In and around Rome, at the present day, horses are shod with his ‘lunette’ or tip, and many of them on the front feet only (the hind feet being entirely unshod); but they are generally fastened on with only three, or sometimes four, nails; and these are the only horses that can keep on their legs in the slippery streets of the city. For the benefit of strangers, that come on horseback from a distance, there are posted up notices, at the various points where paving commences, warning them to dismount at such points in case their horses should be fully shod. Those Englishmen who take any notice at all of the Roman horses’ feet, mostly ridicule the ‘barbarous’ way in which they are shod, and boast of the ‘splendid English shoeing.’ Some even consider it cruelty, and feel so strongly on the subject, that they refuse to hire the vehicles to which they are harnessed. If they were a little more observant they would discover that these horses were sounder in their feet and legs than are our London cab horses, which are shod to death, and most of them unsound and lame on all four feet (or legs).
By our ordinary mode of shoeing, in which about seven nails is the average we employ in each hoof, we are still doing, to a certain extent, the mischief of which La Fosse was guilty. We wedge up and compress the horn with the nails to the extent of about one-twelfth instead of one-fourth. How, then, can we wonder if the hoof, deprived of its full supply of nourishment round its edges, becomes brittle and dry? Can ‘hoof ointments’ or cowdung supply the place of the natural secretions? Mr. Miles, a Devonshire squire, for many years used three nails only on his own horses, and he found them all the better. He had not reflected on the reasons above stated (they are original with the writer, who thought them out for himself, and has never seen them referred to in any work, otherwise he would have acknowledged the source from which he got them, as he always does when he draws upon others); but he was in search of means which might allow expansion and contraction, and he put only one nail on the inside of the foot, and near the toe, the two remaining nails being on the outside part of the hoof. This gentleman made very clever practical experiments as to the extent of natural expansion and contraction; and in his work, ‘Miles on the Horse’s Foot,’ they are illustrated most admirably. The subject of them was a horse nine years old, which had always worn shoes since he was first put to work, and had the shoe removed on purpose for the investigation and experiment. The unshod foot was lifted up, and its contour traced with the greatest precision on a piece of board covered with paper. A similar board was then laid on the ground; the same foot was then placed upon it, and the opposite foot held up whilst it was again traced. The result was that it had expanded one-eighth part of an inch at the heels and quarters; and from the quarters towards the toe this gradually diminished, showing a space of four inches in front, two inches on each side of the centre of the toe, where no expansion whatever had taken place; the tracings proving, at the same time, that expansion was only lateral, and that none took place in the length of the foot from heel to toe. He states that he had other horses which had before shown a still greater expansion than this; but this was only whilst the horse was standing still, and upon three legs.