PAST CONDITION OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 677 
(By the bye, would this not be the most fitting day for the 
annual convivial meeting of the members of the profession and 
their friends ?) I have been desirous of giving these particulars 
from documentary evidence, because it has been too much the 
case for some to conceal, and others to speak disparagingly of, 
the part taken by the Odiham Society. The original curri¬ 
culum of study set forth, that the anatomy and diseases of all 
animals were to be investigated; that botany was to be taught , and 
a special course of lectures given on the nature of epizootic 
affections. The early death of M. Saint Bel, and the appoint¬ 
ment of Messrs. Coleman and Moorcroft, as joint professors, 
soon led, however, to a departure from the intention of the 
original founders. 
It is not a little remarkable that Professor Coleman, a 
distinguished member of the medical profession, who a few 
months after his appointment w r as left in undisputed pos¬ 
session of the professor’s chair, should have devoted his 
great talents and philosophic mind to the anatomy, phy¬ 
siology, and pathology of one animal alone. For more than 
fifty years the horse, the horse ! was the cry within these 
walls; and for the same space of time the blacksmith’s 
hammer rung continually in our ears. “ No foot, no horse,” 
became the text of nearly every lecture, and it w r as attempted, 
day by day, to prove that Vulcan’s art, with spring shoes , 
jointed shoes , frog bar shoes , and tips , w 7 ould restore to health 
permanently diseased structures, and remove hereditary sus¬ 
ceptibility to disease. These w ere fatal mistakes; they 
tended to lessen the science in the estimation of a thinking 
public, and led to every country smith styling himself a 
veterinary surgeon. No wonder that many, even of the 
leading members of our profession, being reared in a 
school like this, should now be found the strong advocates 
of practical shoeing (by which, I suppose, they mean 
forging and fitting of shoes, nailing them on, and pointing 
the nails,) forming a part of the pupil’s education while at 
college. 
I will give place to none on the importance of general 
practical knowledge being acquired within these walls by the 
pupils ; but I am fully persuaded that the continued forcing 
on the public that veterinary surgeons are shoers of horses on 
6t scientific principles,” as the phrase is, is the great bane of 
our art. It has had the same effect on Veterinary Medicine, 
that an adherence to the operations of the barber would have 
had on the medical profession, had its members continued to 
have trammeled themselves therewith. We look forward, 
however, to a more pleasing future, being firmly convinced 
that just in proportion as we throw off this incubus, and 
