H THE IMPROVED ART OF FARRIERY. 



garded as the standard of the veterinary science. Its 

 professors at this period were designated Veterinarii, a 

 term derived from vetennus, a horse, so called by PHny, 

 probably from the steady and quiet disposition mani- 

 fested by that noble animal when trained for the ser- 

 vice of man : and although the veterinary art in the 

 present day is looked upon as synonymous with far- 

 riery, still this latter term, from ferrarius, (ferrum, 

 iron), with stricter propriety would apply to that use- 

 ful and important branch of the art, namely — the shoe- 

 ing of horses 



As farriers, or those who made it their business to 

 shoe horses, were, in the long reign of barbarism which 

 followed the incursions of the Goths and Vandals into 

 Europe, the only persons who practised as horse-doc- 

 tors, the distinction between veterinary and farriery 

 became extinct, and they are now looked upon as one 

 an) Ihe same thing: nor is this to be wondered at 

 when we reflect that books of every description were 

 in that age of darkness shut up in the libraries of the 

 convents, and learning confined to the priesthood and 

 some few of the nobles. Consequently, as the prac- 

 tice of shoeing horses with iron was then first com- 

 menced, the men so employed, called farriers, were 

 likewise resorted to as the sole persons who troubled 

 themselves to procure what little knowledge existed 

 of the veterinary science. 



When a brighter day began to dawn, and learning 

 dissipated the gloom of ignorance, in the sixteenth 

 century, this science found a patron in Francis the 

 First of France. Germany, France, and Italy, vied 

 with each other in producing works on the subject. 

 The writings of Camper and Ceesar Fiarchi were of 

 considerable note. Blundeville, Mascal, Markham, 

 and others, in England, now likewise began to apply 



