Introduction. xi^t 



may term veterinary medicine ; and even in recent times traces of this in- 

 fantile belief have not been effaced from the customs of the most civihzed 

 nations of Europe. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, 

 and other nations — pastoral and agricultural — all resorted to polytheism 

 and the kindred belief in incantations and magic for the cure of dis- 

 eases. History often tells us how these dismal rites were carried out. 

 With half-civilized communities at the present day, we have glimpses 

 of these fantastic notions. 



My friend, Mr Michie,^ tells us of a Mongol superstition, to the 

 practice of which he was a witness. ' As a preventive against cattle 

 being killed by lightning, a horse is devoted to the god of thunder — 

 light grey or white being preferred. He is brought to the door of his 

 owner's tent, and while the Shaman ceremonies are going on, a cup of 

 milk is placed on his back. When the ceremonies are concluded, the 

 horse is cast loose, the milk falls, and the animal is thenceforth sacred. 

 No one may use him again, and, when he dies, his tail and mane are 

 cut off and twisted into those of another horse, which, from that time, 

 also becomes sacred to the god of thunder.' 



But with advancing civilization and a higher development of the 

 intellectual faculties, induced by favourable circumstances, the mind 

 would begin to be disenthralled from the depressing influence of mysti- 

 cism and impotent idolatry ; the benign or malign effects of physical 

 agencies on the domestic animals would at first be almost inappreciably 

 though certainly noted, and the skill of the age invoked to bring them 

 more under the influence of the first and beyond the power of the 

 second 3 while the measures adopted would often be, to a certain 

 extent, aided by the instincts of the creatures themselves, who would 

 naturally shun that which did them harm, and seek for those things 

 which nature indicated as best for them. Their guardians would 

 not be slow in attending to these indications, and in this way would 

 veterinary medicine receive its fundamental empirical teachings. 

 Reason, the divine attribute of the human mind, thus prompted and 

 directed by economic principles, and by that restless, resistless curiosity 

 which seems to seize it whenever it has succeeded in emerging a certain 

 distance from the obscurity of ignorance, would next exert ilself to 

 learn the connection between cause and effect j the phenomena of 

 nature and of life would engage the earliest efforts of a dawning philo- 

 sophy ; and the actions and re-actions ever taking place between agencies 

 external to the body and those operating within it, would load to the 



' Overland Route from Peking to St Petersburg. London, 1864. P. 200. 



h 



