Hippodonomia, or the true structure, laws, and economy, of the horse's foot: also podophthora, or a ruinous defect in the principle of the common shoe detected ... with a proposition for a new principle of shoeing / [Bracy Clark].

  • Clark, Bracy, 1771-1860
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hippodonomia, or the true structure, laws, and economy, of the horse's foot: also podophthora, or a ruinous defect in the principle of the common shoe detected ... with a proposition for a new principle of shoeing / [Bracy Clark]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/166 (page 6)
    them; and it must still be from individual exertion that improve- ments will spring. When a few advances have been made beyond the present state, the progress will be probably more rapid, and its service to the horse and to mankind will assuredly be felt. Many disappointments have without doubt arisen from unfounded expect- ations of relief in desperate and hopeless cases where art could not avail; and some, not finding their interest served in this respect, have become rancorous enemies to the establishment and the pro- fession. The fruit has been sought before the blossom was unfolded. Still there can be no doubt that if human medicine and surgery have been aided by public establishments, the veterinary art must admit of improvement by the same means. It is with pain, however, I have to record, in publishing this second edition, that now the mystery has been unfolded, and the difficulty exposed nearly twenty years, the greatest obstacle to its general acknowledgment and diffusion has originated with that very school founded for promoting horse knowledge, though I had taken every care to avoid giving offence,—so dangerous are institutions, and protected incorporations of men, who have interests at variance with the science they profess, and who view invidiously any knowledge or discovery not originating with themselves. Many promising young men were engaged in this profession at the first establishment of the college, who would have succeeded in any of the common occupations of life, but who have sunk under the difficulties of this. The obscurity of some cases, and the irre- mediable nature of others, with the obstinate opposition of persons interested in the support of darkness, have been so adverse to success, that they have fallen sacrifices to them. Of myself, I may remark, that I have with difficulty persevered under the various discouraging circumstances to which I have been exposed; but at length surmounted several of them, I shall not be deterred from the exercise of this profession while health and strength remain. Whenever I may think that small advances have been made, I