20 THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 



of life. But how many are there in these United States that 

 can diagnose a disease of this character ? Not one hereditary 

 doctor in a hundred can do so with any degree of certainty ; yet, 

 to such a state of perfection are auscultation and percussion now 

 arrived, that the qualified can detect a lesion of the lungs with 

 astonishing precision. Almost every change that takes place 

 within those organs can now be detected by the surgeon with 

 remarkable exactness. And a regularly educated veterinary 

 surgeon would dishonor his profession, and likewise impart a 

 withering influence to his future operations, if he were found 

 wanting in this particular. So that the qualifications needed, 

 not only for the management of this, but every other disease, 

 should be of the first order ; for it is a fact that the losses from 

 acute diseases are far greater than they ought to be, and these 

 losses are felt by the hard-working farmer, and by those who de- 

 pend on the earnings of horses for a living ; and they certainly 

 must hail as a great blessing any attempts to introduce an im- 

 proved medical literature, and a rational system of practice that 

 shall remedy the great evils which now exist. 



The author now proposes to give the reader some idea, by a 

 single illustration, of the absurd and positively injurious tendency 

 which many of our present works on horses have. In a work 

 on the horse, lately published in the city of Boston, we read, 

 that a disease of very frequent occurrence, named ringbone, 

 is an enlargement fed by a bladder ; and no doubt the author 

 thought so, or he would not have written it ; for he was a high- 

 minded man, much opposed to violence and unnecessary medica- 

 tion in the management or treatment of horses. Well, this error 

 in reference to the nature of the disease was not of such great 

 account ; but it led to the infliction of a useless and painful op- 

 eration. The extraction of this bladder is there recommended. 

 An operation is to be performed in a portion of the structure 

 highly organized, and, of course, susceptible to great pain, to ex- 

 tract the bladder, which has about as much to do with the real 

 malady as the reader has with the rising and setting of to-mor- 

 row's sun. But whom have we to extract this bladder ? The 

 author undertakes to answer for the profession. No educated 

 surgeon can be found willing to disgrace the art, and belie his 



