FARRIERY 



TAUGHT 



OJS AN IMPROVED PLAN 



BOOK I. 



niE ORIGIN AND SEATS OF VARIOUS DISEASES IN THE HORSE EXPLAINED, 

 WITH A VIEW TO THEIR CURE OR MITIGATION. 



Introduction. — The necessity and advantages of veterinary knowledge^ 

 and the mearis of acquiring it, as regards prevention and cure. 



Ai.THOPGH it can not be denied, that "'tis better, in a humane point of view, 

 to prevent diseases than to cure them ; " yet, looking at the fact as a veterina 

 rian, without forgetting my feelings as a man, I do not hesitate to say, "this 

 is a consummation we can not reasonably hope to arrive at, whilst the horse is 

 compelled to exert himself to the utmost of his power for our daily profit," 

 whereby he acquires a constant disposition to create disorders. Nor would I 

 be thought to maintain, that "preventives ought never to be employed:" 

 the succeeding pages fully disprove such a conclusion. I merely mean to in- 

 culcate, that, under existing circumstances, they can not be resorted to gene- 

 rail v : and this 1 say, notwithstanding it will be found I have here noted very 

 manv occasions, when rest, alteratives and regimen, might be often substituted 

 for active medicines, more economically, (in my opinion,) both of rime and ex- 

 pense. The hour is not arrived, however, for me to insist too strenuously 

 upon an entirely new mode of treatment of the horse in health and in disease, 

 since that course would appear rather too theoretical for a Treatise designed 

 to be wholly practical. 



Those are the reasons which have induced me to keep in view the readiest 

 wav of enabling the sick animal to return to his work again, according to the 

 long beaten track of my practice ; whilst my main purpose is to show, by an 

 examination of his powers-and his parts (external and internal,) that a mode- 

 rate mode of treatment, in sickness and in health, would be not only more hu- 

 mane but more profitable, as preventive of many of those evils to which thou- 

 sands of horses prematurely fall victims every year. More conducive, also, to 

 H profitable result to their labours would it be for the owners of horses, instead 

 of studying how to " physic" their property, were they to put themselves in a 

 condition, as near as may be, for rejecting, with some degree of certainty, not 

 only such horses as are offeretl to them actually diseased, but such also as, by 

 their awkward built or structure, and consequent ill-formation of the internal 

 parts, can not fail to possess some inherent bad quahty, and thereby a prone- 

 t.ess to its corresponding affliction to the end of their days. This ou4>,ht tc 

 2* 



