FARRIERY. 
collated the various continental writers on 
black cattle and sheep ; another catalogue of 
them may also be found in the Giournal di 
Literati of Italy. Since these collections; 
the number of veterinary writers has been 
immense on the continent, not improbably 
for a reason already assigned. Few or none 
of them have been translated into our lan- 
guage, excepting detached parts of the works 
of tiie eminent French writers, La Fosse and 
Bourgelat. Our late professor Saintbel was 
a disciple of these celebrated veterin rians, 
and drew his geometrical proportions of the 
race-horse Eclipse from the tables of the lat- 
ter. The truth and correctness of these 
geometrical principles have been since con- 
troverted by Mr. Wilkinson. Indeed, seve- 
ral speculative positions laid down in these 
tables do not accord with English practical 
experience ; nor is the continental veteri- 
nary system, it is said, altogether calculated 
for 'the practice of this country, one great 
proof of which presents itself in the failure of 
the celebrated method of shoeing by La 
Fosse. r Fhe French have improved the ana- 
tomical and surgical branches of the veteri- 
nary art, rather than the medical ; the Eng- 
lish have made the greatest improvements in 
the latter : it is not improbably a parallel 
case with respect to human medicine. 
Since the establishment of a veterinary 
college at St. Pancras, near London, in 1792, 
a great number of veterinary surgeons, re- 
ceiving their diploma from thence, have been 
dispersed in the army and throughout the 
country, to our great national advantage, in 
the surgical and medical treatment of horses. 
A number of farriers also annually take the 
advantage of improving themselves at this 
seminary ; but it is to be lamented that the 
light of veterinary science has hitherto shined 
but dimly and imperfectly on the other do- 
mestic animals. A great number of veteri- 
nary publications have issued from. the press 
within this last period; and the two professors 
Saintbel and Coleman, with Messrs. White, 
Board man, Plane, and many others, have 
laudably and usefully distinguished them- 
selves in this way. 'Mr. Blane appears to 
have taken great pains in a new branch of ve- 
terinary science, as it relates to that useful 
domestic the dog. lie has also published the 
anatomy of the horse. But the anatomical 
drawings and engravings of the bones, mus- 
cles, and many of the blood-vessels of the 
horse, of our justly celebrated horse-painter 
Stubbs, are held superior to any thing we 
possess of this kind. 
The objects of farriery we have shewn, are 
the anatomy, physiology, pathology, medical 
and surgical care, and shoeing, of the horse. 
Dr. Crooke, quoted by Snape, affirms, that 
the motions of the heart, the arteries, the 
midriff, the brain, and guts, are the same in 
beasts as in men. Mr. Bracey Clarke ob- 
serves, that “ to describe eacii part of the 
- horse individually and separately, would be 
often only repeating the more elaborate de- 
scriptions of the human anatomy, more fre- 
quently than those but little conversant with 
(his subject would suspect. Many of the vis- 
cera, and even tire myology of the trunk and 
extremities, often correspond in their prin- 
cipal circumstances.” Snape further sa f s, 
that “ in some regards anatomy is more ne- 
cessary to farriers than to physicians, in 
order to find out disorders ; for besides the 
pulse and the urine, and the pathognomonic 1 
signs of each distemper, they (the latter) are 
assisted in their enquiries, moreover not to 
say chiefly, by the complaints and relations 
of the patients themselves; whereas a farrier, 
having to do with a dumb creature, must be 
verv curious in his knowledge oi the parts, 
with their offices, and of the sympathy or 
consent that one part hath with another; or 
else, seeing ail his information must be of his 
own hammering out, lie is like to make but 
a short discovery of the distemper.” Add to 
the above observations, the analogy which 
modern experience has found to subsist be- 
tween human and animal medicine, so far 
as our domesticated animals are concerned ; 
and it will appear to whom veterinary science 
must necessarily be confined ; and that an il- 
literate and ignorant class, whose laborious 
occupation must for ever preclude study and 
reflection, arc totally incapable of the prac- 
tice of medicine, whether human or animal. 
Thus the countenance and encouragement 
of so gross a deviation from rectitude and 
common sense must lie constantly attended 
with loss and disappointment to -the proprie- 
tors, and cruelty to their animals, exclusive 
of the moral breach of holding out to a nu- 
merous set of men the arts ot imposition and 
legerdemain as a livelihood. 1 he branches 
of the veterinary art, justly appropriate to 
the farrier and the cow-leech, are shoeing 
the horse and tire labouring-ox, administering, 
drenches, obstetric practice, bleeding, firing, 
and common surgical operations, under the 
guidance of a scientific veterinarian. Even 
shoeing, which seems most to appertain to 
the province of the common operator, has 
never been, in a single instance, improved 
by that class, but invariably by men ot sci- 
ence: on tire contrary, every improvement 
lias met the strenuous opposition of the com- 
mon farrier, until he has been gradually 
drawn into it, and almost imperceptibly to 
himself. Nor is the province we have as- 
signed to these people, by any means, nar- 
row or confined, but most ample, and ai ioi cl- 
ing a fair scope for both industry and good 
natural talents. Yet far be it from oui in- 
tention to exclude them from the benefits 
either of attending the veterinary college or 
of consulting useful and practical books, 
which, in fact, are the true and only means 
to accomplish them in the fair and propel ob- 
jects of their profession. W e neither counsel 
nor desire any thing farther, than that such 
men, who may be much more suitably and 
advantageously employed, be as little as 
possible permitted to dabble in medicine. 
It has of late been averred, in a sense far 
too general, that analogies fail, as well m 
anatomy as in the effects of medicine, be- 
tween the human and those animats of which 
we treat. It is true the latter are quadru- 
peds, and their structure is ot greater magni- 
tude, and necessarily varies from ours ; their 
integuments are thicker, and their general 
substance more solid. It requires, therefore, 
and the proportion has been long ascertained 
with sufficient accuracy, the application ot a 
more powerful stimulus, in all given cases , 
in many, peculiar modes of administration. 
Certain common articles of the materia me- 
dica, namely, rhubarb, jalap, and the pur- 
crin !T salts, it' has been said ot late, have no 
perceptible effects on the body of the horse, 
an assertion which ought to be received with 
8 
701 
a degree of caution. It is true, jalap and 
rhubarb, which were formerly, and particu- 
larly by Gibson, recommended as ingredients 
in purgative formulae, will scarcely have any 
purgative effect if used by themselves ; the 
latter, however, at least is certainly capable 
of answering many beneficial intentions ill 
veterinary medicine; but its high piice is 
doubtless a strong objection. Purging salts, 
it is acknowledged, will not often excite li- 
quid dejections in horses, although they will 
in cows; but in the former, judiciously ad- 
ministered, they evacuate great loads of soft- 
ened excrement, have excellent cooling and 
diuretic properties, and are well calculated 
for horses much confined in hot stables, and 
for those of delicate constitutions. All, or 
the far greater part, of the most powerful 
and efficacious medicines, both of the tonic 
and debilitating class, have a signal and ana- 
logical effect on the constitution of the horse. 
Nor is the common opinion, that the horse, 
living upon plain and simple food, has very 
little or no occasion for medicines, deserving 
of the smallest attention, any otherwise than 
as applied to the horse ranging at large in a 
state of nature. Labouring in the service of 
man, and confined to the uense and foul air 
of the stables, often in a constant state ot lux- 
urious repletion, exposed also to perpetual 
alternations of heat and cold, his body be- 
comes subject to a variety of diseases, some 
of them of a most malignant type; and with 
respect to accidents, he must, from the nature 
of his severe services, be necessarily subject 
to a greater variety than any other animal. 
The above common-place opinion has ever 
been brought particularly to bear against 
the practice of purging horses, by which 
nevertheless they receive the most obvious 
and important benefits, and ot which they 
seldom fail to have occasional need, whilst 
kept at hard meat in the stable. In tact, 
considering the obstruction and heat to which 
they are liable from the vast volume of their 
intestines, and the dryness and solidity of the 
food with which they are ted, it should 
seem probable that no animals stand moie 
in need of artificial evacuants. The very 
circumstance of the length of their intestines 
has indeed been adduced as a proof oi the 
impropriety and even danger ot administei- 
m°‘ to them purgative medicines, and va- 
rious instances of fatal effects therefrom have 
been proved. Sotteysel, the French writer, 
argued in this way ; and advised the substi- 
tution of perspirants and diuietics, and not- 
withstanding the eminent success which eveiy 
one accustomed to the superior management 
of horses, has experienced from purging 
them, the above superficial and groundless 
notion is occasionally revived even at pre- 
sent. The grand object is the removal of 
visceral infraction and obstruction, the com- 
mon parent of almost every morbid evil in 
the horse- and this can at no rate be effected 
by diuretics, although they gave a partial, 
but illusory, and thence dangerous relief. 
Nor are alteratives, in a general view, so 
advantageous as mild and well apportioned 
purges, which seem, in a particulai manner, 
adabted and friendly to the constitution of 
the horse, filling him with renovated spirit 
and vigour, and increasing his appetite and 
! strength. Purging the horse is perhaps to 
be considered as an English practice, altera- 
lives and diuretics being in more geneial use 
