INTBODtrCTION. 



he is likely to sever, what nerve to wound, what organ to lacerate, 

 what function to paralyze ; who would essay the operation of neu- 

 rotomy without knowing where to look for the plantar nerve ; who 

 would undertake a case of vagiaal spayiag iu ignorance of the 

 location of the flying ovaries ; or who would operate for strangu- 

 lated hernia unaware of the mode of avoiding the infliction of 

 injury upon the posterior abdominal artery — such a man, if to be 

 found, should simply be subjected to an odium which should 

 ostracise him from honorable and equal association with others 

 of his species, besides being held criminally amenable to the law 

 providing penalties for the perpetrators of cruelty to animals 



These reflections may be unnecessary, but it is aU too true 

 that our domestic animals too often become the victims of worse 

 than brutal masters, who take advantage of their helplessness and 

 inferiority to inflict upon them cruelties so gross and aggravated 

 that right-feeling men are often compelled to blush to call them 

 fellows. It is no excuse for this that it is done through the 

 agency of a pseudo-surgeon: such a plea merely doubles the 

 number of the wrong-doers. 



In offering these suggestions, and in formulating the informa- 

 tion which follows, derived from the experiences of many studious 

 and observant men, and which in their aggregate and connected 

 form constitute the substance of this volume, it is assumed that 

 it is only from competent and qualified minds that the apprecia- 

 tion which it hopes to merit and to receive must come, and we 

 trust that to the extent of its justice and truth it wiU not be 



withheld. 



With the skill of the expert anatomist must be associated, of 

 course, the necessary mastery of therapeutics and a familiar knowl- 

 edge of special and general pathology, and all should be supple- 

 mented by a knowledge of the theory and practice of the farrier. 



The science and the apphcation of the laws of hygiene, so 

 generally, indeed almost whoHy, ignored by our fathers, and so 

 largely a discovery of the present time, wiU never be overlooked or 

 depreciated by the genuine surgeon ; and whUe possibly the effects 

 of meteorological influences may have become of less unportance 

 than they were considered to be in times gone by, a careful ob- 

 servance of their phenomena wiU never be a useless item of acqui- 

 sition The fullest attention to the theories and apphcation of 

 what may be denommated the science of antisepsis, and the adap- 



