GENERAL PRINCIPLES 19 



eral medical profession is old, it is crowded, it lias 

 been generally regulated, and in addition it lends 

 itself to certain kinds of question "which would 

 hardly be applied in veterinary practice (such as. 

 Is faith cure ''the practice of medicine?"). The 

 consequence is that almost all the legal points 

 have been considered with reference to the gen- 

 eral profession, and there are relatively very few 

 "reported" cases relative to veterinary practice. 

 The cases reported in the papers, as a rule, are 

 not legally ''reported cases," and they have of 

 themselves practically no value as precedents. 

 They are simply verdicts in lower courts, and if 

 appealed they might be reversed by the higher 

 court. They are therefore very unsafe to depend 

 upon. They are not properly judicial decisions, 

 but so far as the law is concerned they are simply 

 the opinions of one man in each case ; and that one 

 man may be thoroughly incompetent, in spite of 

 the fact that he may have been elected to his posi- 

 tion by a majority of his neighbors for friendly 

 reasons. 



It therefore follows, that in seeking for the legal 

 principles applicable in the practice of the veteri- 

 nary profession we may display few cases in which 

 a veterinarian was involved, but we must depend 

 upon similar cases in other lines. 



