106 INHUMAN TREATMENT OF HORSES IN ENGLAND. 



error has been, that we have not felt ourselves bound to re- 

 gard the feelings and the sufferings of the animal given to our 

 care. 



" A knot of young pupils go to the knacker ; they bargain 

 for some poor, condemned animal ; they cast him, and they 

 cut him up, and torture him alive. They perform the nerve 

 operation on each leg, and on each side ; they fire him on the 

 coronet, the fetlock, the leg, the hock, and the round bone ; 

 they insert setons in every direction ; they nick him, they 

 dock him, they trephine him : when one is tired of cruelty, 

 another succeeds him : and at length, perhaps, they terminate 

 his sufferings by some new mode of destroying his life. Did 

 the great surgeons of the present day thus acquire precision 

 and judgment ? or, if they did, would they not have been 

 supposed to have been qualifying themselves for the office of 

 familiars at the Inquisition, rather than of humane surgeons? 

 Would they not have been detested while living, and held in 

 lasting execration when dead ? But these operations on the 

 living subject teach the youngster how to accommodate him- 

 self to the struggles of the animal, how to feather his lines 

 with mathematical exactness, and to acquaint himself with 

 the true color produced by the iron when it has seared the 

 skin sufficiently deep ! Would not one or two operations on 

 the real patient have given all the information that would be 

 necessary, without engaging the conservators of the health 

 and enjoyment of the horse in the functions of demons, and 

 giving them an indifference to suffering, and a callousness of 

 feeling which taints the whole course of their after practice ? 



" That school wants reform that tempts pupils to the com- 

 mission of atrocities like these. Every pupil, after having 

 been compelled to operate once, or twice, or thrice, on the 

 dead subject before the professors, should in his turn be called 

 on to operate on the different cases which are brought to the 

 colleges. Under the immediate inspection of the professor 

 there could be no danger to the patient ; and one operation, 

 every step of which was guided and directed by the professor, 

 would be more useful to the student than a hundred at the 



