234 
THE VETERINARIAN, APRIL 1, 1853. 
Ne quid falsi dicere auaeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
The Board of Officers sitting, some short time ago, in 
Committee on the System of Shoeing practised in the 
Cavalry, consisted of three Colonels, with the addition of 
the Principal Veterinary Surgeon, and the Veterinary Sur- 
geon of the Royal Horse Guards : the following regimental 
veterinarians and private practitioners being desired to at- 
tend, to represent (by patterns brought with them) their 
respective methods of horse-shoeing : 
Mr. Percivall, 1st Life Guards 
,, Wilkinson, 2d ,, 
„ Legrew, 13th Light Dragoons 
„ Byrne, 4th „ „ 
„ Owles, 6th „ ,, 
,, Constant, 17th ,, ,, 
Messrs. Field, Turner, and a gentleman from 
MavoFs. 
The veterinary surgeons of the army are at all times 
extremely happy to meet their brother civil professionals; 
but, on this occasion, there was unavoidably present, in the 
breasts of the soldiers, a feeling of hurt that their practice of 
shoeing should have to be scanned by the practice of civi- 
lians, and that the latter should have been called in to lend 
aid in a case where, surely, out of all the regimental veteri- 
narians, sufficient number or sufficient talent, could not be 
found to settle the question, without resorting to extrinsic 
ability. We say this, not in the slightest disparagement, or 
while harbouring any wrong feeling whatever, towards our 
professional brothers and friends: our only hurt-feeling 
consisting in the circumstance of its being imagined that we 
were not competent, of ourselves, to pronounce upon the 
shoeing of cavalry horses, without calling in the opinions 
of civilians who had never “seen a shot fired.” For our 
own part — and we may say the same for others, and for some 
even who were not present — we certainly felt ourselves on the 
occasion, purely military as it was, degraded in our having 
been made to seek non-military assistance. We repeat, we 
