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. II.] LENGTH GIVES STRETCH. they do, at their own price, and which the Arabs, who breed them, of course look upon as a very great hardship. Of length and stretch.—Seeing all this, as we now do, how shall we account for the various per- fection and imperfection in the breed of these Eastern horses; for we perceive it not determined to those of Turkey, Barbary, or Arabia, but from each of these countries, some good, some bad, stallions are sent us? What shall we do? Shall we continue to impute it to the blood, or to the finer texture, finer attitude, and more power, pos- sessed by one individual beyond another? But there is also a certain length determined to some particular parts of the racer, absolutely necessary to velocity, of the particularity and propriety of which length, all jockeys appear, from the latitude of their expression, to be entirely ignorant, which is, that “ a racer must have length somewhere, or he cannot take his stretch If I might now be allowed to give my opinion of this propriety of length, I should say it consisted in the depth and declivity of the shoulders, and in the length of the quarters and thighs, and the in- sertion of the muscles thereof. The effect of the different position of the shoulders in all horses, is very demonstrable: if we consider the motion of a shoulder, we shall find it limited to a certain degree by the ligamentous and tendinous parts, which con- fine it to its proper sphere of acting; so that, if the shoulder stand upright, the horse will not be