PERIPLANTAR SHOEING. 
709 
those who at first most sternly contested its merits, it has 
revolutionized the art of farriery—it obtained the fullest praise 
from the principal veterinary teachers, among whom appear 
M.M. Bouley and Gourdon; in Italy Professors Bassi and 
Demarchi, of the Turin Veterinary School, have highly com¬ 
mended it; and in Spain Professor Bellido, chief of the 
Veterinary School of Cordova, has acknowledged its merits. 
Other well qualified authorities on the Continent, too numer¬ 
ous to enumerate here, have been profuse in their encomiums, 
and have testified to the soundness of its principles in a 
physiological point of view. Those vets ” whose self-esteem 
and irrepressible ego dominate every other quality (not to 
mention modesty), and blind them to a sense of what is due 
to others, may assert that these witnesses are nobodies, and 
that they are much more competent to give an opinion than 
any or all of the continental men of science ; but I may be 
pardoned if I anywhere, or in anything, fail to discover the 
slightest warrant for this pompous assertion. 
Such, then, was the Charlier method of shoeing on the 
continent at the time I wrote about it to the Field newspaper 
in February last, and as commented upon in the Veterinarian^ 
for this month (p. 643). Previously to that date, and subse¬ 
quently, several letters of mine appeared in that journal 
relative to shoeing ; and I have it on the authority of veter¬ 
inary surgeons whom I may claim as honest friends, and 
whose opinions on professional matters I ever place before 
my own, be they in harmony with them or not, that there is 
nothing in these letters damaging to the reputation of our 
science. Having, from the very commencement of the dis¬ 
cussion in France, taken an interest in this natural method of 
shoeing, and being besides engaged in an examination of the 
various modes which had preceded it, I at length resolved to 
give it a trial, as whenever I see the advantages of one system 
over another I try, and if successful adopt it. The result of 
the very limited trials I was able to make appeared in the 
Field, with the opinion I had formed of the Charlier shoeing, 
so far as I could give an opinion at that time. 
To my astonishment, after the appearance of one of these 
letters, there was inserted a communication from a veteri¬ 
nary surgeon in which, without its author being apparently 
aware of what this new system was, he attacked me with 
a degree of acerbity for which I am utterly unable to account 
—except on one supposition—and which has increased to 
a very undignified degree. Designating himself as an ex¬ 
perienced man ” — a designation that is almost becoming 
obnoxious to those who understand its meaning—he certainly 
