Horse Tamers. 105 



untoward occurs. Considering the cost of labour, and the 

 high price of hay and oats, it seems preposterous to spend 

 months in gradually making a young horse steady, when the 

 operation can be performed, according to Sample's principle, 

 in a few lessons much more effectively, and without any risk 

 of imparting to the animal the undesirable knowledge of his 

 own power. 



The chief faults of his 'system,' like those of all other 

 horse tamers, were its supposed universal applicability and 

 the assumed permanency of its effects. With the light of 

 nine years' copious experience, I may explain that we 

 cannot any more cure all forms of vice in the horse by one 

 method, than a doctor can heal all his patients by the same 

 drug. Rarey was careful to select only one type of vicious 

 horse, namely, the savage, and having demonstrated his 

 power to reduce such animals to submission, he wrongly 

 argued, or lead his public to argue, that because the most 

 violent form of vice could be cured by his system, that milder 

 forms were equally amenable to its application. As well 

 might be advanced the preposterous assertion that because 

 ipecacuanha was valuable in the treatment of dysentery, it 

 would cure a broken leg. All these ' professors,' Rarey, 

 Sample, Rockwell, Hurlbert, Magner, Gleeson, Pratt and 

 others, were patent medicine men who prided themselves on 

 the exclusive possession of some secret remedy, which, how- 

 ever excellent it might be in some cases, could not possibly 

 be effective in all. A doctor, I may point out, does not 

 rest his fame on the fact of his having invented or discovered 

 any particular medicine, but endeavours to attain success by 

 the intelligent application of the agents he has at hand ; and 

 herein differs from the quack and the so-called horse tamer. 

 The claim made for permanency in the effects of any 

 ' system ' is manifestly absurd. All that we can do in the 

 education of man or beast is to produce on the creature's 

 mind an effect which may or may not be lasting. Horse 

 tamers ignore, either ignorantly or purposely, the great truth 



