xii INTRODUCTION. 



whatever with its mechanism or operations : both such persons 

 are empirics, and worse than empirics — impostors in their pro- 

 fessions : either of them perchance may do good ; but there is 

 ever much to be apprehended that they may be working some 

 irreparable mischief. We hear of " wonderful cures" being 

 performed by persons having no pretensions whatever — indeed 

 possessing none — to medical science ; and in this hit-or-miss 

 manner of proceeding, it cannot be denied that some valu- 

 able discoveries have been made: could we, however, but set 

 against these discoveries, brilliant as some of them may have 

 turned out to be, a true catalogue of the failures attendant upon 

 the experiments in which they had their origin, we are sorely 

 afraid the picture would exhibit a complexion which even the 

 discoverers themselves could not regard without mingled dissatis- 

 faction and remorse. 



Plain and obvious as this necessity for fundamental know- 

 ledge must appear to every reflecting mind, yet there are gentle- 

 men — men of education — enough to be found who commit their 

 horses, in disease as in health, entirely to the care of their grooms ! 

 or, who call to their aid the blacksmith or bell-hanger, rather 

 than put faith in a man who is, or ought to be, even under every 

 disadvantage, alone qualified to comprehend the nature and 

 cause of disease. It was once so with human medicine: science 

 has, however, dispelled the gloom in that quarter ; and will as 

 certainly, in the progress of time, in like manner enlighten our 

 own clouded and sunless regions. 



Want of education among its members, literary as well as 

 medical, has done more real injury to the cause of veterinary 

 science than any one individual agent besides. Superiority in 

 knowledge is the only eifective weapon we possess, with which 

 we are able successfully to combat our opponents : without that, 

 we may exhibit the shadow, but hold not the substance of pre- 

 eminence over those who have for ages had possession of the 

 practice of that art, of which we come before the public, not 

 merely as practical but as scientific professors. 



By learning anatomy, we become acquainted with the situation, 

 form, connexion, and structure of every part of the body. Its 

 action or use is taught us by the science of physiology. From 

 which we proceed to the third natural link in the chain of fun- 



