14-4 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



being bitten by ^^macl clogs;" but the doubt is, ivere 

 they mad fronn hydropliohia^ or only insane from 

 other causes. The mistake is very easily made by 

 superficial observers, and I am sorry to say by 

 veterinary practitioners, who really know little, if 

 anything, about the matter. 



There is nothing calculated to do more mischief 

 than for men who have been educated under the 

 sanction of a Veterinary College to write on the 

 diseases of animals, of whom in life they have not 

 had, nor can they have had, an intimate knowledge. 



They are usually called in to prescribe in isolated 

 instances for animals, when owners of them are 

 baffled in their knowledge of how they had best 

 be treated, and when very likely there is a com- 

 plication of diseases, no one being able to say as 

 to how the patient was first afi'ected, or by what 

 antecedents diseases might have reached him. 

 Thus they are, perhaps, sent for to see a ^^mad 

 dog*" In those two words there is terror enough 

 to bewilder their nerves, and to induce them to 

 shun all contact with the creature whose pulses 

 they ought to study, and to whom they should 

 give remedies witli lancet, physic, hand, or seton. 

 It certainly is not only the shortest way, but it is^ 



