TIIK MODERN HORSE DOCTOK. 23 



History informs us that most of the ancient and modern- prac- 

 titioners who have distinguished themselves in their profession 

 and gained the confidence of mankind, have always paid more or 

 less attention to the dissection of brutes. Thus, in the language 

 of Mr. Vines, u they have transplanted to the medical profession 

 the honor of discoveries that were made in trenching on the terri- 

 tory of the veterinary science.'" " And," continues the same author, 

 " it is not to the study, the treatment, and cure of animal disease 

 alone, that this science is strictly confined. Second only to human 

 medicine in actual importance, it possesses considerable advantage 

 over it, and offers opportunities for the cultivation of general path- 

 ological and physiological knowledge, and more particularly for 

 that important branch termed comparative anatomy, that are far 

 superior to any thing that medical practitioners can boast of." 



In the early period of the history of medicine, it has been 

 recorded that dissections of the human body were held in strict 

 abhorrence ; and when we contemplate what we observe in our 

 own enlightened day and generation — how medical teachers have 

 often been compelled to resort to illegal means in order to pro- 

 cure the necessary material for demonstrating to their pupils the 

 science of life, and that the authority of the law, and the more 

 formidable one, public opinion, has been arrayed against the gen- 

 eral practice of dissecting the bodies of men — then we are pre- 

 pared to realize how much odium the ancients must have attached 

 to the practice. 



From the quotation above, the reader will perceive that 

 Galen attached great importance to the dissection of brutes, and 

 his followers, up to the present day, have, to some extent, carried 

 out his suggestions. 



Reading on through the pages of the history of the past, we learn 

 that those small lacteals, termed absorbents, which are so numer- 

 ously distributed over the internal surface of the alimentary 

 canal, by the aid of which the blood is furnished with the neces- 

 sary material for supplying the waste, developing and preserving 

 the animal organization, were first discovered in kids. Those 

 wonderful pieces of divine mechanism placed within the heart, 

 and known to anatomists as its valves, were first discovered 

 in animals by Erasistratus, who also discovered the cesophagus. 



