AS TO SOUNDNESS. 3 
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 
