foment the feet with it till they become clean and soft. Then the loose parts must be removed from the hoofs, and all bruises be laid bare in the water; and then you are to have in immediate readiness slender twigs of broom, or twine cords, and rough cloths, tow and other coarse stuffing, with garlic (αλλιον) and axle-grease—one by one, so as to have them ready to fix by ties (or bands) round the hoofs. If they (the feet) should inflame, let blood be abstracted from the coronets, and cause the horse to remain in a warm place where there is sunshine, or let a fire be kindled if it be winter-time, and make him a bed of dry dung, that he may not stand on what is hard. The feet may suffer in this way without being much inflamed. Let him be attended for eight days, and stand in-doors on dung; also have his water brought to him, that his hoofs by walking be not torn asunder, but may grow, being nourished by what comes from the dung.’[1]
As Bracy Clark has noted, the twigs of the ‘spartium’ are here recommended to be simply employed as cords to maintain the soft dressing to the tender feet, enclosing the hoofs like a net.
The word spartum, as used by the Greeks and Romans, was meant by them to indicate several species of plants which, like hemp or flax, could be easily manufactured into various articles of utility. But the former people, more particularly, applied this term to a shrub, the Spartium Junceum, or Spanish broom, which is found in a wild state on the dry lands of the Levant and the southern parts of Europe, and the slender branches of which were woven into baskets, while the shoots were prepared and
- ↑ Ruellis. Scriptores Græci Veterinarii, p. 254.
