INTRODUCTION. 



a circumscribed one, in comparison to that of human surgery, by- 

 having the aim and being brought to the test of mere economic 

 utility. While the human life is prolonged at any cost, moreover, 

 the treatment of the animal is always supplemented and influ- 

 enced by the consideration that if curative efforts fail, the suffer- 

 ings of the patient may be terminated by the administration of 

 a prescription which will at once release him from pain and de- 

 prive him of life, with the full sanction both of self-interest and 

 benevolent feeUng. 



Another element which operates to define the sphere of the 

 veterinary surgeon is the natural disinclination of the owner of 

 a sick or disabled animal — perhaps a man of limited pecuniary 

 resources — in a tedious and unpromising case, to add to the ex- 

 pense of surgical attendance the cost of the unremunerated 

 " keep " of his disabled and unproductive servant. 



It ought to be true, as a matter of course (perhaps it is so in 

 point of fact), that no man of intelligence and integrity wUl as- 

 sume the duties and responsibilities of surgical practice without 

 the due preparation and equipment, which is only to be acquired 

 by conscientious study and competent knowledge of medical 

 science at large. Especially and indispensably a surgeon must 

 be an accomplished anatomist. His knowledge must be thorough 

 and practical in the several divisions of anatomical science — he 

 must possess a familiar acquaintance with descriptive anatomy ; 

 he must be fully instructed in surgical anatomy or the anatomy 

 of regions ; he must have mastered the last chapter in pathologi- 

 cal anatomy ; and if there are any other kinds of anatomy, he 

 must master them all, and then he will have become an anatomist 

 in fact, and qualified to practice surgery. Yes ; a surgeon must 

 be an Ai^atomist. 



And it ought to go without saying, that only a surgeon should 

 practice surgery, whether his patient be biped or quadruped. No 

 untrained layman should presume to wield the knife and the 

 cautery with their associated arsenal of weapons and other appU- 

 ances for the subjugation of the enemy whose assaiilts it is the 

 special province of the surgeon to repel. An ignorant operator 

 may easily become, himself, a more dangerous "lesion" than some 

 of those which he presumes to treat. The man who can cut into 

 the living, and usually hypersensitive, flesh of a suffering animal, 

 without knowing what tissue or organ he is attacking, what artery 



