Bibliothèque mondiale du cheval

« The present is a reprint of the former volume, which bore for title, The Veterinary Surgeon , with the necessary improvements, and such additions as the lapse of nearly two years of rigid devotion to the subject would produce, as naturally as the grass grows. But a slight alteration being deemed proper in a commercial point of view, the reader will discover the reasons in a note, which was appended to the Preface to that Original Edition ^[1] I then said, at page XIV : " the volume has been a long time at press, and in October last year was fully announced by advertisement. The author could not therefore satisfactorily account why his title was adopted by another in the month of April of the present year," (1827).The entire failure of that attempt, however, forms one more of those painful monitions people derive from experience ; as he will also in another circumstance of an adverse nature, now pacified, and therefore of no further consequence to the public, unless, indeed, to the curious part of it, who will find, on perusing the last leaf of the Grooms’ Oracle , that my coadjutor and self experienced some unfairness in a certain quarter, now no more ! Whatever person would consult these pages with the requisite profit, should previously read the first book with care; for in it he will find laid down the principles upon which all the subsequent details are founded, how the process of nature is carried on in health, and the cure is to be effected in every species of derangement, by restoring the due performance of those functions. Indeed, he should study it hard, if he would become proficient in " the Art of Farriery," and not rely implicitly upon other people’s prescriptions for the cure of any alleged disorder, which have been composed for the most part without any such preparation. From this neglect, also, symptoms of one disorder are confounded with those of another, when the proposed remedies cannot possibly effect the cure; and the anomalies and changes that occur in the course of every attack are not watched and noted with sufficient care.
If he is embued with the proper thirst after knowledge, be his station in life about the horse what it may, the student had best to comply with the advice strenuously urged at the very outset, to examine the internal parts of dead horses, as often as opportunity presents itself, which in the neighbourhood of large towns and hunts is frequent enough. For this is the manner in which I was myself mainly instructed; as well as by noting down whatever then appears worthy of observation, connected with the previous disease of the deceased subject. To pave the way for more erudite studies, I have in this edition devoted a dozen pages of Introduction to the Study of Horse Anatomy; quite elementary, and very slight, it is most true, but I trust they will be read without occasioning trouble, if not with interest.
Such was my manner of proceeding from early youth, with daily practice of Farriery going on, for several years, until at length, in 1803, I became an author, or rather a translator of La Fosse ’s Manuel d’Hippiatrique . This was done at the request of Mr. Badcock, of Paternoster Row, with whom I since then entered into close intimacy, as my late father had already done. But I shall pass no compliments with a man who uses none himself, nor acknowledge the helps I have derived from his advice and his pen, further than appeared in the Preface to my first edition, at page IX.[…] » Présentation de l’éditeur (1829)

« London, 1825. » Huth (1887)