G E N E li A L 1 .N T liL) 1 ) L CT 1 U N. 



IX 



according to the method of the continental schools. Yet whatever light had, as yet, been 

 tliiown upon the subject of vcteriniiry art, down to the reign of George I., the 

 medical care and treatment of horses, and other domestic animals, was confined entirely 

 ti> the leeches, farriers, and cow doctors of the period. Such was the deplf)rablc condition 

 cf this art down to the early part of tlie eighteenth century, wlien it attracted ilie att<^;n- 

 tion of William tiibson, who iuul acted as an army surgeon in the wars of Queen Anne; 

 aiul wlio, to a souiul judgment, seems to have added the essentiality of practical knowledge. 

 He was the first i)rofessional man who, in this country, made the attempt to improve 

 the veterinary art ; and, like all men of sense and observation, seems to have commenced 

 in the right way.^ Reasoning analogically, he gave those, or similar, medicines which 

 acted favourably on the human system, to such animals as were afTected with the same 

 or a similar class of diseases. His work on farriery forms an era in the annals of 

 veterinary literature ; and the fundamental parts of his system became the basis of a very 

 superior practice. A second edition of his work appeared about the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, when it was followed by another excellent work on the same subject, 

 by Dr. Bracken, a physician of Lancaster. After him came Bartlet, a surgeon in Bow 

 Street, Covent Garden, who was rather a compiler than an originator of the art. He, 

 however, was the first to introduce the impracticable system of short-shoeing, which 

 had, at that time, been practised in France by La Fosse, a farrier of considerable expe- 

 rience, and a great practical veterinary anatomist. As Bartlet had no pretensions to the 

 art of horse-shoeing, he adopted the rules of La Fosse ; and these, fanciful as they seem 

 to have been, operated beneficially on the practice of England, as it then existed. The 

 subject, however, was not suffered to rest here. A Mr. William Osmer, a surgeon and a 

 sportsman, took it up, and published an excellent treatise on horse-shoeing, reducing the 

 speculative rules of La Fosse to the standard of his own, and that of English experience 

 generally. His book proved of great usefulness ; and being written in a plain and 

 popular style, found its way into the hands of great numbers of the shoeing-smiths 

 throughout the country. Those who had horses, and valued them, were now alive to the 

 importance of the subject of horse-shoeing. The Earl of Pembroke wrote a treatise on 

 it, and Berenger published a respectable work on the grand menage, Clarke, then 

 king's farrier for Scotland, issued a couple of superior treatises on shoeing, and on the 

 prevention of diseases in horses ; and the eighteenth century may be said to have 

 become prolific in veterinary publications and practice. France took the lead in the 

 movement ; but a zeal for the improvement of this branch of science also pervaded 

 Germany, and other continental states. Colleges were founded and established in various 

 countries, in which the science has since continued to be regularly taught. A catalogue 

 of the various continental writers on black cattle and sheep, was made and published in 

 the Giournal di Literati, of Italy. Since that time, the writers on veterinary science 

 on the continent have greatly increased, although comparatively few of them have found 

 their way into this island through the medium of our language. 



We have now arrived at 1792, when the Veterinary College, St. Pancras, London, 

 was established for the treatment of tlie maladies of all domestic animals. At first, 

 however, the institution did not flourish ; but it gradually gained ground ; and now, a 

 much more widely-extended view of the benefits to be derived from its instructive 

 modes of practice to all kinds of domestic animals, is receiving a more favourable 

 recognition. A large number of valuable veterinary publications have issued from the 

 press since the commencement of the present century ; and these are still increasing. 



