On the education and training of the veterinary pupil : the present state of veterinary medicine and veterinary literature : and on the art of horseshoeing and its relation to the veterinary profession / by W. Haycock.

  • Haycock, William.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education and training of the veterinary pupil : the present state of veterinary medicine and veterinary literature : and on the art of horseshoeing and its relation to the veterinary profession / by W. Haycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    sneered at by the medical journals, and paragraphs have been written against' us in the public papers because we have not made a larger per-centage of cures; but, gentlemen, we have innumerable difficulties to contend against, difficulties many of which appear insuperable, and of a character of which the human surgeon is entirely ignorant, such as sanitary arrangements which are grossly defective in every essential on the part of numbers who own stock; the gross want in numerous instances of even the most common attention in the separation of the sick from the healthy, or the absolute impossibility of doing this; also the proneness of numerous stockholders to quack and interfere with our treatment in every way conceivable ; the difficulty in the ma- jority of instances of procuring proper clothing and food; all these, and many other obstacles of a like character, are constantly being presented, so that, if we do not perform miracles, we are regarded as useless, and looked upon with contempt. Before it can be known what per-centage of diseased animals are curable by medicine it is necessary to know what would be the average recoveries if left without medicine. We are totally igno- rant of such a result, and, I may add, of many other essentials respecting tliis most mysterious and most direful malady. On the Art of Shoeing Horses, 'and its relation to the Vetejiinauy Art.—The last topic I shall treat upon is the art of shoeing horses, and its relation to the veterinary surgeon. I take up this branch of our subject because others have alluded to it in a way which I am satisfied is not only erroneous, but calculated to have an injurious effect in what I consider is strictly cognate to the perfection of the power of a veterinary surgeon in the practice of his art. I contend that a veterinary surgeon cannot become a thorough workman at practice unless he owns a shoeing-forge. I do not assert that the mere owning of a forge will necessarily make perfect a veterinary surgeon as a practitioner, because he may own a shoeing-forge and be ignorant of almost everything he ought to know ; but I state most emphatically he cannot become a thorough master of practice without he has owned or does own, or has been or is in association with, a shoeing-forge. We are told that veterinary medicine and the art of horseshoeing are no more connected than human surgery is with the making of shoes for human beings. I am perfectly aware that an ingenious reasoner could make a display with an argument of this kind, but, after all, it would only he a display. The analogy between the two is very slight; in fact, the only clear ground of similarity is this— they are used to protect the feet—the iron shoe to protect the foot of the horse, the leather shoe that of the human being; beyond this the analogy ceases, and the argument is worthless. In large towns like Manchester it is a matter of paramount ne- cessity that a veterinary surgeon should be constantly associated with a shoeing-forge. In the first place, a large per-centage of our