FARRIER, one whose employment it is to shoe horses, and cure them when diseased or lame. The term farrer is probably a corruption of ferrier, in French ferrans, from the verb ferrer, to shoe a horse; all these words being de-
rived from the Latin ferrum, iron. There is no doubt that the word farrier was at first used to denote a person who shod horses; but as persons of this description were for a long period the only horse-doctors, the term was soon used in the more extensive sense of horse-doctor or horse-leech; and hence farriery came to signify the art of curing the diseases of horses.
There can be little doubt that the word farrier was originally spelt ferrier or ferrer, as we meet with this latter orthography in some of our older writers. Thus Blundeville, who wrote in the time of Queen Elizabeth, in his Address to the Gentlemen of England, book fourth, has the following sentence: "All horses, for the most part, do come into their decay sooner than they should do, by one of these four waies; that is to say, either for lacke of being well bred, or through the rashness of the rider, the negligence of the keeper, or else through the unskillfulness of the ferrer." Again, the same author mentions "Martin Ghelly of Aston, called Martin Alman, chiefe ferrer to the queen's magistie."
Farriery, in the usual acceptance of the word, forms only a part of the more general art, which has been commonly called the veterinary art, by which is understood the art of medicine as applied to the inferior animals, an art which has been long called by the French l'art vétérinaire, or médecine vétérinaire. This word veterinary is of very ancient date, being derived from the Latin veterinarius, which is used by Columella to denote a horse-doctor or cattle-doctor. The term veterinary, being derived from veterinus, a softened and abbreviated form of veterinus, à vehendo, carrying, is properly applicable only to beasts of burden; but veterinary medicine is now commonly employed in a more comprehensive sense, to denote the art of curing the diseases of domestic animals in general. See VETERINARY MEDICINE.