AS TO SOUNDNESS. 



hereafter, I hope the remarks which may fall from 

 me may at least point out the thousands of pitfalls 

 which beset every young veterinary practitioner who 

 attempts the examination of a horse as to soundness. 

 I shall make it no part of my duty to instruct you 

 how to examine a horse under unfavourable conditions, 

 such as we meet at a sale or in an open market, but 

 at once proceed to give as clear an account as it is 

 in my power to frame of the most exact method I 

 know of ascertaining the soundness of a horse. Method 

 is a thing which I wish particularly to draw your 

 attention to. For any veterinarian to attempt the 

 task without method is a folly which will as often 

 land him in difficulties as not. Science does not 

 recognise slipshod work, and if you are to perform 

 the task of going over ground beset with so many 

 hidden pitfalls, you will either have to follow the path 

 which I, or some other who knows the road, am 

 about to point out to you, or find it for yourselves, 

 and in doing so find it after repeated and humiliating 

 failures that may spread over one-third — as it too 

 often does — of professional life. After you have 

 traversed this beaten track for years, you will still 

 be unable to leave it with safety, although sorely and 

 often tempted to do so. 



Of course, there are numbers of cases brought to 

 us for examination where we see flaws at once, and 

 where we can in one minute give a sound opinion : 

 and there are times when we have not an opportunity 



