328 THE IMPROVED ART OF FARRIERV. 



feelings and the sufferings of the quadruped given 

 to our care. 



" A more protracted residence at our places of ve- 

 terinary tuition, by bringing young men of superior 

 stations in life, and better previous education, will, by 

 degrees, correct these principles and habits which too 

 much characterize and yet disgrace the groom and 

 the smith. 



** Practice alone, founded on anatomical knowledge, 

 can give expertness in operation. The human surgeon 

 practises first on the dead subject, and his instructor 

 or his senior standing by, can explain the reason, the 

 importance, or the danger of every step. The veter- 

 inary pupil has advantages far superior to those which 

 are enjoyed by the student of human surgery. At 

 the knacker's he finds a constant supply of dead sub- 

 jects, and he procures them or the parts he wants at a 

 cheap rate. But this does not satisfy him — he vou 

 faucibus hoerat ! with fewer operations generally to 

 perform, and still fewer of importance, practises on the 

 living subject. A knot of pupils go to the knacker, 

 they bargain for some poor condemned animal, they 

 cast him, and they cut him up, and torture him alive. 

 They perform the nerve operation on each leg, and on 

 each side they fire him on the coronet, the fetlock, the 

 leg, the hock, and the round bone ; they insert setons 

 in every direction; they nick him, they dock him, they 

 trephin him : when one is tired of cruelty, another 

 succeeds ; and at length, perhaps, they terminate his 

 sufferings by some new mode of destroying life. Did 

 the Coopers, the Greens, the Brodies of the present 

 day, thus acquire precision and judgment ? or if they 

 had, would they not have been supposed to have been 

 qualifying themselves for the office of familiars at the 

 inquisition, rather than of humane surgeons ? Would 



