William Gibson, surgeon-farrier, on fevers.

WILLIAM GIBSON, born about I680, was the first ofa succession ofeighteenthcentury British surgeons to turn to the then distasteful subject of farriery as a career, or as a medium for the exercise of literary talent. Concerning his early life we have little information. Presumably he was trained as a surgeon via the usual apprenticeship route; the first notice of his public life dates to I714, at the termination of the wars of Queen Anne, when his name appears in the Army Lists. At this time he served with Colonel Tyrell's Regiment of Foot; later he was with the i6th Dragoons under Colonel Charles Churchill, during which time he had the opportunity to observe the difficulties mounted troops had with diseases and injuries of their horses. Apparently foreseeing difficult times ahead as an ageing ex-army surgeon, Gibson seized upon farriery as a means of achieving fortune, if not fame, upon his anticipated return to civil life. That he prepared assiduously for this day is evident from the fact that in I 720, not long after his discharge from army duty, he published his first work, The Farrier's New Guide. The following year he published a supplement to his Guide in the form of a Farrier's Dispensatory, and a third work, The True Method of Dieting Horses. The conclusion is inescapable that the manuscripts for these works were planned, and probably prepared, during his later years of army duty. His Guide, he says, is partly the result of observations made while on army duty, and 'partly ofsome that have been made since', but his civil practice must have been strictly limited at this time. While taking up the less than noble calling of the farrier would have entailed considerably less sacrifice of prestige for a surgeon than for a physician at the time, such a stet could not be construed but as one down the social ladder-a fact which Gibson well understood. 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. It would seem reasonable, therefore, to accept more or less at face value certain of the higher sentiments expressed by Gibson concerning his momentous decision. In dedicating his work on the Dieting of Horses to his former commander, Colonel Churchill, then Governor of Chelsea College, Gibson states,