A primary version of William Gibson’s veterinary work A New Treatise on the Diseases of Horses – whereby what is critical to the data of a horse, the treatment of his ailments, and different issues referring to that topic, are totally mentioned … with the most affordable and most efficacious treatments is being supplied on the market in The Netherlands. Image courtesy of Antiquariaat Forum
It might shock present-day horse homeowners that, at one time, the veterinary career was thought of “distasteful”, and the sector was often known as “farriery” up till concerning the 1800s.
Among the primary to make a good fist of the remedy of animals was military surgeon William Gibson, who was born in about 1680.
Gibson’s The Farrier’s New Guide, revealed in 1720, was the primary work in English on the ailments of the horse “to include more than a passing attempt at anatomy”, veterinary historian James Frederick Smithcors wrote in an editorial on Gibson in 1958. Smithcors was an affiliate professor of anatomy at Michigan State University, and his huge physique of labor contains The Veterinarian in America 1625-1975.
The yr after the Guide, Gibson revealed a complement to it within the type of a Farrier’s Dispensatory, and a 3rd work, The True Method of Dieting Horses.
The transfer by human surgeons into veterinary work was seen as a step “down the social ladder”, Smithcors stated. “Apparently foreseeing difficult times ahead as an aging ex-army surgeon, Gibson seized upon farriery as a means of achieving fortune, if not fame, upon his anticipated return to civil life.”
Smithcors famous that the artwork of veterinary medication, “esteemed by the ancients, and practiced in a more progressive manner than human medicine in the Byzantine era”, had fallen into decay through the Dark Ages. But as horseshoeing developed within the third or fourth century, “a new class, that of the shoeing-smith, nee ferrarius, entered the scene”.
During the Middle Ages, the care of horses was “firmly ensconced in the hands of the farrier – hands more accustomed to lifting the feet of horses than to holding aloft the torch of scientific inquiry”, Smithcors stated.
William Gibson’s A New Treatise on the Diseases of Horses. Image courtesy of Antiquariaat Forum
“For more than a century a succession of genteel writers had urged attention to the diseases of horses by educated men, but to no avail, at least with regard to men with medical training taking up the tainted profession.”
On retirement from the military in 1732, Gibson established a enterprise from the place he sorted the horses of the House Grenadiers and the Guards in addition to these of modern gents.
“To Gibson’s time, not a single medical man in Britain had deigned to risk the stigma of writing upon animal disease, to say nothing of actually entering veterinary practice. The term veterinary itself was virtually unknown in the English language until about 1800.”
Before then, Smithcors stated that farriers, “even those who could read, were interested in little beyond that which professed to be cures for the diseases of the horse”. The info supplied was additionally patchy and sometimes unhelpful. Indeed, a later writer, surgeon-farrier William Taplin, “described diseases of the non-existent gall bladder of the horse” via some 15 editions of his Gentleman’s Stable Manual (1788)”.
Gibson’s first Guide discovered a big following, with eight editions earlier than his most essential work A New Treatise on the Diseases of Horses, was revealed the yr he died, in 1751. “It is a safe assumption that the majority of those farriers who did give some attention to anatomy prior to the end of the century were introduced to the subject by Gibson’s efforts in this direction,” Smithcors stated. “Only one other Anatomy of the Horse (1766) by the artist, George Stubbs, was published before 18oo.” This costly version was restricted to 150 copies and dealt solely with the skeleton and muscle mass.
“A perfect stallion” is the frontispiece of William Gibson’s A New Treatise on the Diseases of Horses. Image courtesy of Antiquariaat Forum
Veterinary historian General Sir Frederick Smith described Gibson’s Treatise as “an immense improvement … one which hands his name down as a careful clinical observer who added to the sum of human knowledge”.
A uncommon first version of Gibson’s A New Treatise on the Diseases of Horses – A brand new treatise on the ailments of horses: whereby what is critical to the data of a horse, the treatment of his ailments, and different issues referring to that topic, are totally mentioned … with the most affordable and most efficacious treatments is being bought by Antiquariaat Forum in The Netherlands.
Published in London, the 464-page e-book is sure in half calf and is quarto, or quarto sized (305x483mm). It contains 31 numbered engraved plates of skulls, bones, legs, intestines, bloodstreams, ulcers, swellings and different ailments.
It is on the market at €475.
Smithcors, J. (1958). William Gibson, Surgeon-Farrier, on Fevers. Medical History, 2(3), 210-220. doi:10.1017/S0025727300023760
