VETERINARY GROOMS. 165 



any odds that the cases were not alike, further 

 than each horse was sick or lame. Next he saw 

 the horse get balls. He might just know enough 

 to detect by the smell that these balls contained 

 aloes ; but of the quantity, or what might be com- 

 bined with them, he knows no more than he does 

 whether aloes are a gum or a vegetable root. He 

 might see a horse both physicked and bled, for 

 (we will say) the same disease as that under 

 which the one labours that he intends to cure ; 

 but he never dreams that physicking and bleeding 

 might both be proper in one stage of a disease, 

 but certain death in another. One that among 

 hundreds of instances of this kind have come 

 under my personal notice, I will mention. 



A friend, on sending a horse from Dublin to 

 London, had requested me to give him a stall, 

 that the horse might rest for a day or two before 

 going the last hundred and odd miles, on his road 

 to London (for a journey from Holy head, which 

 was the route he came, was no joke before the 

 railroad was completed). Prior to starting from 

 Dublin, a veterinarian had very properly re- 

 commended a dose of physic, fearing, from the 

 full habit of the animal, some attack on the bowels 

 during the journey ; this the groom, who thought 

 he knew everything, had neglected, or rather 

 omitted to give. Shortly after arriving at my 

 stable, the horse was taken exceedingly ill ; and 



