A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Chap. //.] FORE-LEGS OF ARABS. is taken, who is defended from the extremes of heat and cold, whose food is never limited, and whose vessels are filled with the juices of the sweetest herbage, shall we wonder, I say, that his offspring, so brought up, should acquire a more perfect shape and size than his progenitor ? or, if the sire is not able to race, shall we wonder that the son, whose shape is more perfect and larger, should excel his sire in all performances? But there is still another reason why many of the very finest of these Eastern horses cannot race. Our observation of them will shew us, that though their shoulders in general incline backivarcl exceed- ingly, denoting the racer, yet their fore-legs stand very much under them ; but in different horses this position is more or less observable. This (when I considered the laws of nature) appeared to me the greatest imperfection a stallion could possibly have: but when the same gentleman informed me, that it was the custom of the Arabs always to keep each fore-leg of the horse chained to the hinder one, of each side, when not in action, I no longer consi- dered it as a natural, but an acquired imperfection. Shall we longer wonder, that a horse so treated, though ever so well made in other respects, cannot race in spite of all his blood? I well remember this to be the case of the Godolphin Arabian when I saw him, who stood bent at the knees, and with his fore-legs trembling under him.* In our country * Those Eastern horses always tremble when brought into this country, even in the stable, in winter, though the tempe-