AMATEUR VETS 17 



mella, 20 a.d. ; Apsyrtus, 322 a.d., besides many 

 others, have given us valuable contributions. 



A singularly interesting library, consisting of 

 several thousand well-known books, might be 

 formed by a literary millionaire who chose to 

 collect the different treatises that have been 

 written, often at long intervals, until a well- 

 recognised veterinary college was founded in 

 England in 1796. In order to spare those who 

 are not bookworms the trouble of poring over 

 thousands of musty old volumes, this so far is a 

 faint outline of some of the enormous knowledge 

 which these early authors possessed, who wrote 

 so easily and so brightly. 



This is how Xenophon begins his book : " It 

 has been my fortune to spend a great deal of 

 time in riding, and so I think myself versed in 

 the horseman's art. This makes me the more 

 willing to set forth to the younger of my friends 

 what would be the best way for them to deal with 

 horses." 



There is nothing bumptious about Xenophon's 

 style. Each sentence is written from a natural 

 horseman's point of view. In those times chargers 

 and hacks were fed on oats. 



Apsyrtus and also Vegetius allude to a dis- 

 ease which was possibly a form of colic. The 

 symptoms mentioned were : the patient became 

 doubled up with pain, could not bend his legs, 

 threw himself down, refused to move, and took 

 his food lying. " This disease is incurable unless 

 it cures itself," said Aristotle. It was certainly a 

 sweeping assertion ; but then he never had the 



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