473 
‘ OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS IN HEALTH AND 
disease: 
Comments by “ Qilesitou.” 
Gentlemen, — I was pleased to find, on reading this 
month’s number of the Veterinarian , that your talented cor¬ 
respondent, Mr. Fleming, had called the attention of the 
profession to a statement which he found in a work now pub¬ 
lishing, entitled * Our Domestic Animals in Health and 
Disease,’ in which the author asserts that of the lame horses 
cast as being no longer fit for military service two thirds are 
preventable cases, and many of them even curable by the 
simple application of a better system of shoeing than now 
prevails in the service. 
If our army veterinary surgeons will but give us a few 
statistics, which they can easily do by looking through their 
case-books, the correctness or otherwise of this statement 
will soon be arrived at. 
For myself individually, the question has a great interest, 
as for some years I—in conjunction with some resident landed 
proprietors-—have been trying to introduce the mode of 
shoeing generally adopted in this country into Germany, 
more especially Saxony, as being superior to that now in 
use, both for military and general purposes, and, as we con¬ 
ceive, with highly satisfactory results. 
This attempt at an innovation naturally caused a discus¬ 
sion ; and amongst others wLo have written upon the subject 
is Veterinary Surgeon Erdt, of Coslin, who, in a paper sent 
to an agricultural journal, published monthly at Berlin, says, 
“ If we compare the two systems, the result is very un¬ 
favorable to the English. In the Prussian army scarcely 
per cent, of the horses are cast on account of foot 
lameness, whereas Miles himself, in his work, page 38, says, 
(e and still there are more horses cast as unserviceable every 
year from disabilities commencing in the foot than from ail 
other causes combined. For that reason, according to the 
testimony of well-informed Englishmen (Goodwin), the 
shoeing is so faulty, that in no country are so many ruined 
feet to be met with as in this, for its breed of horses so 
famed a land.” 
What inference are W'e to draw' from these statements ? 
Mr. Erdt says that horses wearing shoes, specimens of 
which lay on the table w r hilst I am writing, which 
xx xvi i. 31 
