INTRODUCTION. 



tation of antiseptic measures, now so iiniversally and unintermit- 

 ting an adjunct to all medical and surgical practice, and so utterly 

 indispensable in the departments of dressing and nursing, and so 

 often an available and valuable aid in the very act of operating, 

 must be considered now to have become an incorporated and con- 

 stituent department of the domain of surgery, and medicine as 

 well, and the cultured veterinarian will of course so regard it in 

 Ms practice. 



Without being necessarily a practical worker at the anvil, the 

 surgeon, as we have intimated, must acquire a familiar acquaint- 

 ance with the theories and the art of the farrier. No one can 

 place too high an estimate upon the importance of the position 

 occupied by the foot among the anatomical regions where lesions 

 may be expected to occur, and whereas the shoe becomes practi- 

 cally identified with the living member, and is, in use, a portion of 

 the hoof itself, by the act of naUing the shoe and the hoof together 

 the inference becomes palpable. An occasion may easily arise 

 when a serious blunder in treatment may be traced to a previous 

 blunder in diagnosis, which again may be referred to an earUer 

 blunder still, which has consisted in neglecting to examine the 

 foot, and the shoe which has injured it. What is the status, in 

 respect to his market value, of a horse with poor feet, or whose 

 good feet have been ruined by bad shoeing 1 So the veterinary 

 surgeon, though not required to be able to make a set of shoes, 

 should be expected to know how they ought to be made and fast- 

 ened. And when a special shoe is required for the correction of 

 a deformity, or as indicated in some diseased condition of the foot, 

 it will of course become the exclusive province of the surgeon to 

 dictate the whole process of forging and fastening, and to see that 

 Jiis instructions are not ignored. 



Besides the special scientific attainments to which we have 

 referred, there are many other qualifications which must enter 

 into the character of the good and skillful surgeon, in order to 

 round it into true symmetry and proportion. Bouley remarks 

 that "he must not only be a man of science, but a man of art," 

 meaning, we suppose, that he should not only possess knowledge, 

 but know how to make it available. First, he must possess the 

 faculty of knowing how to gauge the necessity of his interference, 

 with its manner and its duration ; or, on the other hand whether 

 any interference is necessary, and whether the true indication is 



