26 PROGRESS OF THE VETERINARY ART IN ENGLAND. 



sum of money was voted by the Parliament, towards the aid 

 of the institution. George the Third granted the rank of 

 commissioned officers to such as might be appointed to regi- 

 ments. About the year 1827, the directors of the East India 

 Company, observing the good effect produced by the appoint- 

 ment of veterinary surgeons to the British cavalry, were like- 

 wise induced to grant the like appointment to young men 

 who might think fit to join the native India regiments. 



A course of lectures is still given by the professors through- 

 out the season ; the pupils are still examined by a medical 

 committee. Demonstrations in anatomy, &c, are given daily, 

 and the pupils have the advantage of dissecting subjects 

 themselves, and also of seeing the practice of the infirmary. 



The following is from one of the works of the first pro- 

 fessors : " We know that physicians of all ages applied them- 

 selves to the dissection of animals, and that it was almost 

 entirely by analogy that those of Greece and Rome judged 

 of the structure of the human body. We are told that 

 Herophilus and Erasistratus studied anatomy on the human 

 frame some centuries before the Christian' era, and that the 

 former even dissected living subjects, having obtained the 

 bodies of malefactors for that purpose. On the other hand, 

 it is abundantly proved by history, that the great progress in 

 anatomy, till within a few centuries, was made by the dis- 

 section of brutes. A superstitious reverence for the dead, 

 which prevailed for many centuries, confined the Greeks and 

 Arabians to the dissection of apes and quadrupeds. Galen 

 has given us the anatomy of the ape for that of man ; and it 

 is evident that his dissections were restricted to brutes, when 

 he says that if learned physicians have been guilty of gross 

 error, it was because they neglected to dissect animals. 

 Erasistratus was the first who discovered the lacteals in 

 kids, which he opened a short time after they had sucked. 

 He observed the valves of the heart, and demonstrated, con- 

 trary to the opinion of Plato, that there was, behind the wind- 

 pipe, a canal or passage, viz., the oesophagus, whose office 

 was to convey food into the stomach. Rufus of Ephesus, we 



