VETERINARY DISCOVERIES. 
335 
fortunately for science, even more short-lived than their first pro¬ 
mulgators—a great many fooleries hanging about, and mystify¬ 
ing, and neutralizing, and disgracing that which contained much 
sterling good—to Mr. Coleman we are indebted for the establish¬ 
ment of the grand principle of ventilation,' by which the list of the 
most contagious and fatal diseases to which the horse used to be 
exposed has been curtailed, and the lives of thousands of these 
useful animals preserved ;—to Mr. Sewell the credit is due of re¬ 
viving the operation of neurotomy, which has added years of com¬ 
fort and usefulness to the existence of so many of our quadruped 
servants ;—to Mr. B. Clark is due, not the discovery of the elas¬ 
ticity of the horse’s foot, but the merit of having placed this 
important principle in a clearer point of view than any previous 
author had done, and assisting others in forming* more accurate 
and comprehensive notions of the structure and functions of the 
different parts of the foot than they would otherwise have done;— 
to Mr. James Turner we yield the claim of first bringing before 
the public, and clearly explaining, the nature and the seat of that 
most frequent of all the maladies of the fore foot of the horse, the 
navicular joint disease; not, perhaps, altogether unknow T n to a 
few of our best and most observant practitioners, but the existence 
of which was not acknow ledged at any school, and even denied 
in most of them : and to him shall also be awarded the undivided 
praise of adapting an old and useful shoe, the one-sided nailed 
shoe for the prevention of cutting, to a far more important and 
unthought-of purpose, the prevention of contraction. Mr. W. 
Goodwin shall not lose the meed of dispelling the mystery which 
hung over lamenesses of the hind leg, w hen he first directed the 
attention of his professional brethren to the inflammation of the 
synovial membranes of the small bones of the hock : and no one 
will deny that, while Mr. Blaine was, for many a year, the 
valued companion of the student in the dissecting room and in 
his private study, he was the father of canine pathology. 
Our Correspondents have been pleased to compliment 11s on some 
humble contributions to the advancement of veterinary science. We 
are perfectly willing to leave those claims in their hands, and to 
the just estimation of our successors. Every labourer in our 
