Farriery Improved; or A Complete Treatise on the Art of Farriery. Wherein are Fully Explained, The Nature's and Structure of that useful Creature, a Horse; with the Diseases and Accidents He is Liable to; and the Methods of Cure.; Exemplified by Ten Elegant Cuts, Each the Full Figure of a Horse, likewise Rules for Breeding and Training of Colts: Practical Receipts for the Cure of Common Distempers Incident to Oxen, Cows, Calves, Sheep, Lambs, Hogs, &c. To Which is Prefixed, Ten Minutes' Advice to the Purchasers of Horses.
Philadelphia: printed for Mathew Carey, No. 122 Market-Street, Jan. 12, 1809.
Price: $450.00
About the item
Third American Edition. With 10 mostly folding plates. iv, [5]-144pp. 12mo. Contemporary red quarter moroco and marbled boards.
Item #371774
The ten cuts from the first edition are on 8 plates, plus The Age of a Horse by the Teeth, and the frontispiece, Blacksmith Murdering a Poor Horse.
Henry Bracken (1687-1764) began his practice as a physician and surgeon and, as a horse owner and patron of the turf, turned his hand to veterinary science in an era when most practitioners were abysmally ignorant. He was among the first to diagnose equine ailments, rather than simply treating the symptoms. "No previous writer had drawn attention to the matter, while among the general public an entire absence of education was apparently regarded as the first essential of a veterinary practitioner." (Frederick Smith, The Early History of Veterinary Literature.) The book, first published in 1738, went into a dozen English printings, and at least three in the United States, all of them scarce.
