Diseases of Domestic Animals. xsxv 



braneh of rural economy.^^ The venerable Hippocrates 

 M-rote a treatise upon the subject—In Carthage, Mago com- 

 posed an elaborate work on rural and veterinary i..ed.c.ne. 

 -Columella, who lived about the fiftieth year of the Chris- 

 tian account, devoted four booUs, out of twelve on husbanory 

 in general, to veterinary medicine. Cato, Varro, Phny, and 

 Ve,-e<ius, (A. C. 300,) also laboured to serve veterinary me- 

 dictne—Indeed I find from my researches on this subject, 

 that the course of human and animal medicine proceeded to- 

 gether, until they both fell^t the irruption of ignorance and 

 barbarity into Europe, in the third and fourth centuries; 

 but at the revival of knowledge, and of a spirit of inquiry, 

 while the intrinsic value of the life of man animated those 

 labours which have advanced human medicine to its present 

 state of perfection, it was the undeserved lot of veterinary 

 medicine to be excluded from the asylum of the sciences, 

 and to be left to the undisturbed possession of the most illi- 

 terate and obstinate of men—To withdraw it from its obscu- 

 rity, and to restore it to that rank among tlie arts and scien- 

 ces which it was its right to hold, was a merit reserved to 

 France. So long back as the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century, Ruellius compiled by order of Francis the first, a 

 large assemblage of veterinary matter, whicli he translated 

 into Latin, and published in folio, in the most splendid style, 

 at the expense of his king. Afterwards, the government ot 

 the same country, under Lewis the fourteenth, formed the 

 first establishment for studying the diseases of animals ; ami 

 in the year 1763, a regular school was founded at Lyons, in 

 France, for tiie study and improvement of veterinary sci- 

 ence, with every convenience for that purpose ; apartments 

 for dissections, with a botanic garden, and professors m che- 

 mistry and materia medica, and others to teach the anato- 

 mical structure of animals in general ; with the nature and 

 fure of the diseases incidental to them, that thereby the 

 whole nation might be provided with skilful farriers.^ This 

 shortly after gave rise to a similar one near Pans, and 



vol. m. '' 



