The Horse Infirmary, Coventry
An 18th century advertisement:
~ R E W's Unparalleled Diuretic Horse Balls prepared by no one in the Kingdon
but his Assign and Successor E J Palfrey ~
The really terrifying thing about this advertisement (for which, to Rosemary Hall, many thanks) is that the Coventry Horse Infirmary might have been the best thing available.
It obviously served the needs of fashion as well as health: I can't think of any purpose cropping a horse's ears would serve other than fashion. Foxing appears to be much the same thing as cropping: Charles Augustus Goodrich's 1831 New Family Encyclopaedia, or Compendium of Universal Knowledge describes foxing thus:
"FOXING. This consists of depriving a horse of a portion of his ears, for the purpose of improving his looks. An easy mode of performing the operation is to take a small paintbrush and with paint in contrast in colour to the horse, mark the ears of the shape and length required: then place a switch on the horse's nose, at the same time holding up a fore foot; with a sharp knife cut the ears in the line made by the paint. Wash the wound with salt and water once a day for a week, after which apply sweet oil until healed. Those horses only which have small, thin, delicate heads, are improved by foxing."
Washing the wound afterwards, I would imagine, must have depended on whether the horse would let you anywhere near it after you'd shaved bits off its ears with no anaesthetic.
I have managed to track down an Elizabeth method (in fact, several) for making a star, but more about that tomorrow.
Comments
Now... I remember being haunted as a child by a pony book where a horse has a star added. Cut and wire put in or something. Was it one of the Pullein-Thompson Black Beauty books?
My pony had a plastic eartag punched into his ear when I bought him (similar to a cattle tag). It took four months before he was happy enough with his ears being touched again so that I could get the horrid thing out.
I can just imagine how ear-shy ear-cutting would make a horse, and all just for fashion. Yuk.
A plain bay mare is given a diamond shaped star in order to make her more saleable, and there's some kind of divine retribution for the dealer who orders it to be done (with the wires under the skin method - the star that is, not the retribution).
I had it in an anthology, but can't find it now. It may have been one of C P-T's Pony Scrapbook collections, as I don't have any of those. It's not in that fat hardback of P-T short stories, or in C P-T's book of Pony Stories.