Manuel Gilman, VMD, a prominent racetrack veterinarian who served in many office capacities over 46 years, died Nov. 25 at 91, according to his son Charles Gilman.

Gilman served as chief examining veterinarian for the New York Racing Association (NYRA), as general manager of Louis and Patrice Wolfson’s Harbor View Farm, as director of the U.S. Jockey Club, and finally as Jockey Club steward at the NYRA racetracks.

He grew up on Long Island volunteering to muck out stalls and clean horses so he could learn to ride. As a teenager he earned enough money riding show horses to pay for college (the University of Maine) and veterinary school (the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded the Surgery Prize).

Gilman’s storied career as the examining veterinarian at the New York Thoroughbred racetracks began in 1945 and would continue for the next 32 years. He realized that the horny growths on the inside of a horse’s legs—called chestnuts or "night eyes" by native Americans—served as the homologue of the human fingerprint, and he developed the Universal Horse Identification System now used throughout Thoroughbred racing to prevent "ringers" and assure that the horses on which the public was betting were in fact the horses running in the race