FAR
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FAR
FARN Islands, two groups of little islands and rocks, seven-teen in number, opposite to Bamborough castle in Northumber-land.
l-'ARNHAM, or FERNHAM, a town of Surrey , and capi-tal of a district of its own name, 41 miles from London on theWinchester road.
FARNOVIANS, in ecclesiastical history, a sect of Unitarians,which arose in the loth century, so named from Farnovius ;whose principles they adopted, and soon after whose death theywere dispersed.
IARO, a sea-port of Portugal , in the province of Algarva, onthe Gulf of Cadiz, 20 miles S. \V. of Tavira.
Faro, a populous and fertile island of Sweden , 30 miles in cir-cumference, separated frem Gothland by a narrow channel.
Faro, the capital of the above island, seated on the S. E. coast.Lon. 19. 7. E. Lat. 57. 50. N.
Faro, Cape, a promontory of Sicily, near Messina , on whichis a light-house.
Faro Islands. See Ff.rro.
Faro of Messina, a strait of the Mediterranean, between Si»cily and Calabria , about 7 miles across; so named from CapeFaro ; remarkable for its tide’s ebbing and flowing with great ra-pidity every six hours.
FARRIERY , [from/em’ere, Fr. a bag of instruments usedin the shoeing, &c. ot hones, so named from the Latin j'errum,iron, of which the instruments were made,] the art of preventing,curing, or alleviating, the disorders of horses. The practice of thisuseful profession has, till within the last fifteen or twenty years,been almost entirely confined to a class of men, w ho were utterlyignorant of the anatomy of the horse, and the general principles ofthe art of healing. Their prescriptions were as absurd as the rea-sons they a signed for administering their draughts, bolusses,drenches, &c. An institution has at length been established,where the diseases of that noble animal, the horse, are the subjectof peculiar attention ; we mean the Veterinary'College , which,we are happy to state, is patronized by the most respectable of thenobility and gentry. From the manifest great consequence of theservices of the domestic animals to man, in a state of civilization,they have, trom a very remote period of antiquity, been the ob-jects of his study and attention, both as to their ordinary manage-ment, and that which was requisite for them in a state of disease :for the latter a peculiar system was formed, including a materiamedica and general mode of treatment considerably distinct fromthose in use with human patients. Of the authors of this system,whether Greek or Roman, nothing worth notice has been handeddown bevond an occasional citation of names, to be found in Co-lumella the Roman w riter, who lived in the reign of Tiberius , andtreated at large on the general management of cattle ; and in Ve-getius Renatus, who lived two centuries afterwards, and wrotemore professedly on animal diseases. Both these authors havetreated their subject in elegant and classical Latin ; and the lattermost particularly has urged, in very eloquent and forcible lan-guage, the necessity of a liberal cultivation of the veterinary art,as well on the score of profit as of humanity. It ought to be re-membered, however, that neither of these authors had the benefit ofany professional acquaintance with medicine or surgery, so obscureand imperfect were those sciences in their days ; and that noancient treatise on the diseases of animals, written by a profes-sional man, has descended to posterity. Nor is this in the smallestdegree to be regretted, since we not only find in the authorsnoove-mentioned a sufficient field for the satisfaction of our curio-Slt y, but also the most ample proofs of the irrationality of ancientprinciples and practice, and their total inapplicability to modernoccasions. On veterinary anatomy and physiology no attemptsat discovery or improvement are to be traced in those writers, asingular detect, considering the progress which had been made inEgypt and Greece in both the human and comparative anatomy.Lelsus is the only physician of eminence among the ancients whois reported to have written on veterinary medicine ; this part ofhis works has not survived, nor is probably the loss we havehereoy suffered very con.iderabie. Xenophon is the oldest ve-tc.mary writer on record ; but his treatise is confined to the train-ing and management of the horse for war and the cliace. Withrespect to the tragments of ancient Greek and Latin veterinary"liters, collected and published by Rticllius, chief marshal, or far-rier to^ l-rands I. king of France , they appear to have been gene-> tne works of military men, or other lovers of ihe horse ; per-i-qo none of them were of medical education. W'e learn from\CL. 11.—NO. 79.
the works of one of them, (Theomnestus,) which is confirmed aVc-by others, that the ancients had a knowledge of the disease calledthe glanders in horses and other cattle, which was denominated inthose days the moist malady. The chief merit of the ancient ve-terinary writers consists in their dietetic rules and domestic ma-nagement ; they were in the habit of purging their animals, but inother respects their medical prescriptions appear to us an incon-sistent and often discordant jumble of numerous articles, devoideither of rational aim, or probable efficacy. In the operations ofsurgery, particularly in phlebotomy, and indeed in the variousmethods of manual treatment and controul of their animals, theancients were far more skilful; and what they have left on thesymptoms of diseases, if of no consequence in the present ad-vanced state of science, still serves to demonstrate '.hat they hadnot been inattentive observers of animal diseases, however infe-rior they might be in their methods of cure. These an-cient writers are yet to be esteemed superior, nut only in learn-ing and eloquence, but in professional utility, to the majority oftheir pupils of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.On Ihe revival of learning in Europe , at the above periods, theworks of the ancient veterinary writers w ere early sought andtranslated in Italy and France . At the same dawn of openinglight and enthusiasm for the resuscitation and enlargement of ihebounds of useful science, the anatomy and physiology of the hu-man body became the grand objects of pursuits in the Italianschools. Veterinary anatomy followed in course ; and the de-*structive labours ol Ruini and others on the body of the horse,have not cnlv served for a ground-work and model to all theschools of Europe since ; but succeeding discoveries and improve-ments, notwithstanding the vast advantage of a general diffusion oflight have not been hitherto sufficiently considerable to detractin any eminent degree from the well-earned fame of those earlyand original anatomists. Veterinary medicine was now generally-cultivated, and in some instances, under regular medical profes-sors. W’e find the following names in a list of those who hadw ritten on the res veterinaria in Italy during that period :—Lau-rentius Russitts, Camerarius, Apollonius, Iloratio, Albeterio,Grill, Ca’sar Fiaschi, Evangelista; and afterwards in Germany andFrance, Gresson, Libai , Wickents, l.a Brove, Vinet. Everybranch of the Equine a-conomy, whether relative to ha: ness andtrappings, equitation and military menage, or riding the greathorse, the methodical treatment ot the hoot, with the invention ofvarious forms of iron shoes, and their scientific adaptation, werepursued with general assiduity and success. In this latter depart-ment Caesar Fiaschi distinguished himself; and either invented orrecommended the welted shoe, proposinga substitute for calkens andfrost-nails, which it appears w ere then in use, us well as the lunette,or short half-moon shoe. Evangelista, of Milan, distinguishedhimself in the breaking or education of the hoise, and to him is at-tributed the invention of the martingale. The new veterinary sci-ence having diffused itself over a great part ol the continent, couldscarcely fail of occasional communication with this country, wherethe care of the diseased animals had been cemin tted imniemo-rially to leeches and farriers, persons generally belong'ng to themost illiterate class of society. It is probable that such communi-5 U cations