FARRIER*. 
These men, labourer* of Iron, were origin- 
ally termed term's, or terriers, from the Latin 
word ferrum, iron, and their craft ferriery ; 
which word has since, either by a very usual 
corruption or improvement of language, been 
changed to farriery. This term remains yet 
in general use to’ ils fullest extent, and not 
inaptly ; since notwithstanding the laudable 
attempts of many enlightened men at various 
periods, our blacksmiths form a very large 
majority of horse surgeons and physicians. 
Nor is such defect peculiar to this country, 
but prevails in an equal degree throughout 
Europe ; even in Italy and France, countries 
which preceded us many centuries in vete- 
rinary science, and from which indeed we 
have derived its elements. 
On the establishment of a college, about 
fourteen years since, for the instruction of 
pupils in animal medicine and surgery, under 
a French professor, (Saintbel) we imported 
also from France the term veterinary, and 
the veterinary art has been since substituted 
for farriery by practitioners of liberal edu- 
cation. The supposed derivation of the term 
veterinary is from the participle vcctum, of 
the Latin verb veho, to carry; quasi vecteri- 
nary, thence applied to the care of animals 
which carry, or beasts of burden. The change 
to veterinary was easy and in course ; and if, 
according to the opinions of some, we ought 
to revert to the radical orthography, and 
write ferriery instead of farriery, a parity of 
reasoning, and desire of close adherence to 
the root, would induce us to retain the c, and 
pronounce the word vecterinary. It is easy 
to conceive what revolutions in language 
such attempts would occasion if generally put 
in practice; hut by no means easy to discover 
the utility of a capricious and partial adop- 
tion of such changes in particular words. 
The term veterinary was originally used 
by the Latins, (Vegetius) and has a more ex- 
tensive import than our farriery, which re- 
lates to the horse solely ; whereas the former 
comprehends the care, both in health and 
in a state of disease, of all those animals do- 
mesticated for the laborious service or food 
of man. In a history of the general science 
those branches may, however, be properly 
considered together. 
From the manifest great consequence of 
the services of the domestic animals to man, 
in a state of civilization, they have, from a 
very remote period of antiquity, been the 
objects of his study and attention, both as to 
their ordinary management, and that which 
was requisite for thqm in a state of disease : 
for the latter a peculiar system was formed, 
including a materia medicaand general mode 
of treatment considerably distinct from those 
in use with human patients. Of the authors 
of this system, whether Greek or Roman, 
nothing worth notice lias been handed down 
beyond an occasional citation of names, to 
be found in Columella the Roman writer, 
who lived in the reign of Tiberius, and treat- 
ed at large on the general management of 
cattle; and in Vegeti is Renatus, who lived 
two centuries afterwards, and wrote more 
professedly on animal diseases. Roth these 
authors have treated their subject in elegant 
and classical Latin; and the latter most parti- 
cularly has urged, in very eloquent and for- 
cible language, the necessity of a liberal culti- 
vation of the veterinary art, as well on the sco re 
of profit as of humanity. It ought to be 
fjqq 
remembered- however, that neither of these 
authors had the benefit of any professional 
acquaintance with medicine or surgery, ob- 
scure ami imperfect as were those sciences in 
their days; and that no ancient treatise on 
the diseases of animals, written by a profes- 
sional man, lias descended to posterity. Nor 
is this in the smallest degree to be regretted, 
since we not only find in the authors above- 
mentioned a sufficient field for the satisfaction 
ot our curiosity, but also the most ample 
proofs of the irrationality of ancient princi- 
ples and practice, and their total inapplica- 
bility to modern occasions. (Lawrence’s 
General Treatise on Cattle.) On veterinary 
anatomy- and physiology no attempts at dis- 
covery or improvement are to be traced in 
those writers, a singular defect considering 
the progress which had been made in Egypt 
and Greece, in both the human and compa- 
rative anatomy. Celsus is the only physician 
of eminence among the antients who is re- 
ported to have written on veterinary medi- 
cine, apart of his works which has not sur- 
vived ; nor is probably the loss we have there- 
by suffered very considerable. Xenophon is 
the oldest veterinary writer on record ; but 
his treatise is confined to the training and the 
management of the horse for war and the 
cliace. With respect to the fragments, of 
antient Greek and Latin veterinary writers, 
collected and published by Ruellius, chief 
marshal, or farrier to Francis I. king of France, 
they appear to have been generally the works 
of military men, or other lovers of the horse ; 
perhaps none of them were of medical edu- 
cation. \\ e learn from the works of one of 
them, (Theomnestus) which is confirmed also 
by others, that the antients had a knowledge of 
the disease called the glanders in horses and 
other cattle, which was denominated in those 
days the moist, malady. The chief merit of 
the antient veterinary writers consists in their 
dietetic rules and domestic management ; 
they were in the habit of purging their ani- 
mals, but in other respects their medical pre- 
scriptions appear to tis an inconsistent and 
often discordant jumble of numerous articles, 
devoid either of rational aim, or probable 
efficacy. In the operations of surgery, par- 
ticularly in phlebotomy, and indeed in the 
various methods of manual treatment and 
controul of their animals, the antients were 
far more skilful; and what they have left on 
the symptoms of diseases, if of no consequence 
in the present advanced state of science, still 
serves to demonstrate that thev had not been 
inattentive observers of animal diseases, how- 
ever inferior they might be in their methods 
of cure. These antient writers are yet to be 
esteemed superior, not only in learning and 
eloquence, but in professional utility, to the 
majority of their pupils of the fifteenth, six- 
teenth, and seventeenth centuries. 
On the revival of learning in Europe, at 
the above periods, the works of the antient 
veterinary writers were eagerly sought and 
translated in Italy and France. At the same 
dawn of opening light and enthusiasm for the 
resuscitation and enlargement of the bounds 
ot useful science, the anatomy and physio- 
logy of the human body became the grand 
objects of pursuit in the Italian schools. 
Veterinary anatomy followed in course ; and 
the descriptive labours of Ituini and others on 
the body of the horse, have not only served j 
for a groundwork and model to all the schools 
4 T 2 
of Europe since; but succeeding discoveries 
and improvements, notwithstanding the vast 
advantage of a general diffusion of light, have 
not been hitherto sufficiently considerable to 
detract in any eminent degree from the well- 
earned fame of those early and original aua- 
tomfits. \ eterinary medicine was now gene-a 
rally cultivated, and in some instances, under 
regular medical professors. Wq find the fol- 
lowing names in a list of those who had writ- 
ten on the res veterinaria in Italy daring that 
period : — Laurentius R ussius, Camera! im, 
Apollonius, Horatio, Albeterio, Grilli, Casar 
Fiaschi, Evangelista ; and afterwards in Ger- 
many and France, Gresson, Libal, Wickerus, 
La Brove, Yinet. Every branch of the 
equine economy, whether relative to harness 
and trappings, equitation and military menage, 
or riding the great horse, the methodical 
treatment of the hoof, with the invention of 
various forms of iron shoes, and their scienti- 
fic adaptation, were pursued with gem-ral 
assiduity and success. In this latter depart- 
ment Caesar Fiaschi distinguished himself; and 
either invented or recommended the welted 
shoe, proposing a substitute for calkens and 
frost-nails, which it appears were then in use, 
as well as the lunette, or short half-moon shoe. 
Those horsey-nails of peculiar form, of late 
years recommended as a new and useful iiif 
vention, under the name of concave nails, 
were well known in those times of which we 
now speak. In fact, considerable progress 
was made towards a perfect system of horse- 
shoeing, which however declined and retro- 
graded during a long interval, until its revival 
in France and England within the last fifty 
years. Evangelista, of Milan, distinguished 
himself in the breaking or education of the 
horse, and to him is attributed the invention 
of the martingale. 
The new veterinary science having diffused- 
itself over a great ‘part of the continent*' 
could scarcely fail of occasional communica- 
tion with this country, where the care of dis- 
eased animals had been committed immemo- 
rially to leeches andfarriers, persons generally 
belonging to the most illiterate class of society. 
It is probable that such communications be- 
came frequent during the reign of the first 
Tudors; for we learn from Blundeville, who 
wrote in the time of Elizabeth, that French 
and German farriers and riding-masters were 
not only employed by the queen, but in gene- 
ral by the nobility and gentry of the countrv. 
Yet our improvements in this countrv, in 
consequence of foreign aid, with regard to the 
medical and surgical branches at least, were 
by no means great, extending our view from 
the period of which we now speak, to the early 
part of the eighteenth century. No medical 
name appears during that long interval iipen 
our veterinary list, nor any one of the small- 
est scientific pretension, we. mean as far as 
respects the medical, anatomical, of surgical 
branches, that of Snape excepted, who was 
farrier to Charles II. and whose family, it ap- 
pears by his book, had served the crown in 
that capacity upw ards of two hundred years. 
Snape’s anatomy of the horse proves h m to 
have been a well-informed farrier. His ana* 
toniical system, arrangements, and nomencla- 
ture, were in course drawn from the Italian 
school ; but he dissected, and his descriptions 
were confirmed by his own observation. II is 
! numerous plates are hold, accurate, and hand- 
j somely executed* Whether or not fie pub- 
