Xll PREFACE. 



To the sparseness of our agricultural population, we may 

 probably attribute, in a great measure, the absence of a class of 

 persons, well supported in Europe, who profess to treat scienti- 

 fically, the diseases of domestic animals. There, the study of 

 comparative anatomy has served to illustrate and improve the 

 science of medicine. More especially was it subservient to that 

 end in past ages of superstition, when the dissection of the human 

 body was regarded as sacrilegious. The discovery, says Doctor 

 Rush, of the saUvary glands in an ox — of the fallopian tubes in 

 ah ewe — of the thoracic duct in a horse — of the lacteals in a 

 kid — and of the pancreas in a turkey, led to the discovery of 

 the same parts in the human body ; and it is well known that 

 the circulation of the blood and of the peristaltic motion of the 

 bowels, in man, were first suggested by experiments and obser- 

 vations on animals of the lower order. Their physical structure 

 and complaints have, in fact, for years past, been the subject of 

 regular lectures by the ablest Professors in the Universities of 

 London and Edinburgh ; and hence it is, that there, improve- 

 ments in the veterinary have kept pace with the progress of 

 other useful arts, until it has reached, in practice, a high degree 

 of certainty, and of honour as an intellectual profession. Under 

 such auspices, and assurances of authority and excellence, has 

 this ninth edition of " Clatter's every man his own Cattle 

 Doctor" been published in England — compounded, not by 

 ignorant cow-leeches, and made up of nostrums to be adminis- 

 tered without judgment or discretion, but embodying the mature 

 results of careful and scientific research. 



In the hands of the American Editor, the work now presented 

 has undergone no alteration of matter or arrangement. He has 

 not presumed to disturb what he could not hope to amend ; but 

 some additions have been made in the confident hope of render- 

 ing this edition more acceptable by making it more useful to the 

 American reader. These additions will be found to consist of 

 essays and illustrations intended to diffuse such information on 



