SHOULDER LAMENESS IN THE HORSE. 
477 
to draw in accomplishing their excellent literary labors. In 
America we have had scarcely more than four decades, during 
which entirely too little writing has been done by our prac¬ 
titioners. I do not believe that it is possible at the present time 
for us here in America to produce an adequate set of treatises 
on veterinary subjects from material which is in sufficiently 
large measure oui -own, for such material is not yet in exist¬ 
ence. What we need is a score of years of activity with the 
pen on the part of our practitioners, recording, whenever occa¬ 
sion offers, their individual research and experience. At the 
end of that time I believe we can produce a literature which 
will be equal to that of the Kuropean nations, and compare fa¬ 
vorably with that of human medicine. 
An eminent physician recently writes: “ There can be no 
broad, useful medical literature without careful reports and an¬ 
alyses of large numbers of cases. Such literature can only be 
built up by reporting accurate observations upon all phases of 
disease under all the conditions in which it is met.” 
That excellent quotation used in the American Veteri¬ 
nary Review, and which Dr. Bell writes me is to be credited 
to the Veterinary Record , says : “ Careful observation makes a 
skillful practitioner, but his skill dies with him. Bv recording - 
his observations, he adds to the knowledge of his profession 
and assists by his facts in building up the solid edifice of patho¬ 
logical science.” 
Bet us unite in a persevering effort to build up a national 
veterinary medical literature. 
SHOULDER LAMENESS IN THE HORSE. 
By Ro'scoe R. Bell, D. V. S., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
A Paper read before the New York State Veterinary Medical Society, Sept. 8 , 1899. 
If ever veterinary surgery should be forced to follow in the 
footsteps of human medicine and assume specialties in its prac¬ 
tice, the chief branch would be diseases and accidents of the 
locomotory apparatus, for surely the most frequent demands 
