220 ON VETERINARY MEDICINE 



confifts in a certain number of receipts derived 

 from their mafters or fathers, and with which 

 they continually ring the changes in all cafes, 

 right or wrong, hit or mifs ; and fo fiercely are 

 they bigotted to their particular noilrums, that 

 they are totally incapable of all advice or im- 

 provement ; the common and unavoidable fate 

 of confirmed ignorance, fince it is the higheft 

 point of knowledge, to know that we flill need 

 information. They fometimes cure by luck, 

 feldom by wit, but often kill by regularly 

 adapted procefs. How often has the miferable 

 patient's fhoulder been pegged, and blown, and 

 bored, by way of punifhment for the folly of 

 getting himfelf flrained in the back finews of 

 the leg, or cofEn-joint ! How many pleuritic 

 horfes have been killed outright by ardent and 

 fpicy drenches, which might probably have 

 cured the cholic, had they been afflicted with it ! 

 How many have been rendered incurably lame, 

 from the patten-fhoe being affixed to the wrong 

 foot ; the doftor unfortunately not being aware 

 of the difference between conftri6lion and re- 

 laxation, as the patient in Gil Bias died becaufe 

 his phyfician did not underftand Greek! Let 

 not the reader fuppofe thefe to be mere flourifh- 

 es ; applied to the generality of farriers within 

 my knowledge, I aver them, on the experience 

 of many years, to be literal truths ; and by the 

 tenor of them, he may judge of the majority of 



that 



