412 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
human and brute medicine, singular instances of warnings to 
lay aside our lancets and phleams, and to alter our practice 
in other respects from what our forefathers so strongly in 
their day approved of. But of this, perhaps, the art of horse- 
shoeing affords one of the most striking instances on record. 
It makes one absolutely melancholy to reflect upon the 
labour and pains, even of life-times, bestowed upon this art — 
upon the talents and cost expended upon it, and now to take 
a view of the present flat, unimproved condition of the art as 
it stands at present, and seems for some time yet as likely to 
stand. 
Into some such train of thought as the foregoing we have 
been led by the accidental occurrence of a call we happened 
to receive from a member of our profession, who is nothing 
like so generally known among us, and consequently not held 
in such estimation, as, had his lot been differently cast, he 
might, and most certainly would, have stood long ere now : 
the gentleman to whom we are alluding, is Mr. Herbert 
Hallen, the veterinary surgeon of the 6th or Enniskillen 
Dragoons, whose locum tenens , the unfortunate Mr. Kelly ! was 
lost, the other day, in the conflagration of the horse transport, 
f Europa. J Very little converse had passed between Mr. 
Hallen and myself, before mutual discoveries were made, 
that we were both all but unanimous in our opinions con- 
cerning the practice of shoeing. 
It was gratifying in the extreme, to meet with a man of 
experience whose sentiments, on a subject of so much im- 
portance as shoeing, ran in unison with my own ; and, being 
both military characters, we soon fell into talk about the late 
military commission on shoeing, the principal object of which, 
indeed the only one which they could expect to carry, was, 
that of harmonising or rendering uniform methods of shoeing, 
which varied as much in the different regiments of cavalry as 
they amounted to in number. This, no doubt, was a thing 
to be deplored — it was more than deplorable, it was dis- 
creditable to the service; and, as such, sadly called for 
amendment. But, how was it remedied ? — alas ! how was it 
remedied ? Tell it not in Gath ? 
A committee w 7 as formed, of what ? Of veterinary sur- 
