the face in every instance—the shoe? It is true that continual suffering, which would cause nervous irritability, would in most cases have told upon the constitution, but he confounded effect with cause. He states also that navicular disease is caused by pressure on the frog—a diseased frog, of course—rendered incapable by the farrier of performing its functions; and afterwards says that, as far as his knowledge extends, it is unknown in the unbroken animal. Of course it is. The unbroken animal is also unshod, yet he can gallop about amongst loose granite or over solid rocks with impunity. Mr. Douglas says that goats never suffer from navicular disease, but that he believes they would do so if they were shod.
Perhaps some of those correspondents who have so kindly come forward to give their experience of unshod horses will still further favour us by saying whether or not they had found amongst them many ‘crib-biters,’ ‘wind-suckers,’ or ‘weavers.’ The writer has never met with a single case of either of these three; therefore he is forced into the conclusion that shoeing cannot be considered entirely blameless as to their cause. Some day a pathologist will arise who will give an account of influences now ‘veiled in obscurity.’ In the meantime practical experiment will convince some that by giving up shoeing they have struck at the root of a host of diseases and vices.
Sight could not, of course, be restored to the blind, nor an anchylosis be loosened, and so forth;
