A Conformation/Soundness Thought

I was watching the western channel today on Directv and really noticed all the old time horses. My thoughts are they aren't the best put together horses but didn't they all look substantial and therefore, hopefully sound?

I just read where a lady went back into her horse's pedigree and found all sorts of horses that looked like a 'committee horse' but yet her horse was a very nice horse. I'm wondering if these old time horses had as many soundness problems as you hear about today.

From my experience with the older types of committee horses, they were pretty much sound and stayed that way. They weren't pretty by todays standards but if they stayed sound, that's a pretty horse to me!

Just one of those wondering things I think about... :-)