352 
WILLIAMSON BRYDEN. 
to send to the Veterinarian a little article claiming that bone 
spavin and some other diseases and defects of the horse's limbs were 
ca'used by defective hoofs. It was an event I will long remember, 
both for the anxiety it gave me, first as to whether it would 
be considered worth publishing or be thrown into the waste 
basket, and second for the satisfaction and encouragement its 
appearance in print gave me. 
For some three years previous I had mostly practiced in 
accordance with the text-books and lectures at college until 
convinced, not only of their error, but of the necessity for 
some system that must recognize the hoof, when deranged or 
defective, as the essential cause of most of the blemishes and 
diseases of the feet and limbs of the horse. Such a system 
being the only one that can ever relieve us from the confu¬ 
sion we are in on the subjects of soundness, heredity, etc., or 
help us out of the ruts such eminent writers as Percival and 
a few others led the profession into, until their theories and 
practices have become to the veterinary surgeon like a creed, 
whi Ji it would be audacity to question. It makes no differ¬ 
ence how much the modern practitioner has failed to obtain 
the results promised or expected from the firing iron, the 
frog seton, tenotomy, neurotomy, and the' whole array of 
other operations endorsed as so-called remedies by them, 
whether applied to the cause or the result. 
My experiences, coupled with the success attending a 
rational treatment that discriminates between causes and re¬ 
sults, compelled me to condemn and abandon the old methods, 
and advocate and practice something in harmony with a more 
consistent philosophy. The impulse to contribute something 
on this subject became so irresistible that it has ever since 
been my greatest delight not only to make of the horse’s hoof 
a careful study, but to think, to practice, and try to impart to 
others whatever might be found beneficial to the profession, 
or lessen the sufferings of our humble patients. 
It can now be demonstrated beyond a question that in 
such diseases as bone spavin, bog spavin, curb, splint, ring¬ 
bones, etc., the hoof can be guided in a right as easily as in a 
wrong direction with complete success ; so that such blemishes 
