Historical Chronicle What can we get out of Lafosse's 'New Shoeing' described in Philippe Etienne Lafosse's Le Guide du Marechal of 1766?

摘要

It is already difficult to get ten farriers to agree on the shape of a shoe, so wanting to understand the course of farriery's development through a 250-year-old text might seem pretentious, might it not? Yet the subject deserves our attention, giventhe author's influence in France and abroad. My courses and conversations with farriers as far away as Italy led me to acquire this manual for horse doctors and farriers, Le Guide du Marechal, to understand the foundations of his reputation. The text andplates are very clear. The explanations of the diseases and sometimes avant-garde remedies confirmed my belief that this work could be considered the first modern treatise on the subject. I consequently had the idea of looking at contrasting and comparing the treatise on shoeing (Traite de la Ferrure) contained in Le Guide du Marechal, with contemporary farriery, although the use of horses has changed considerably since its publication.