955 
VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
REMINISCENCES OE THE VETERINARY ART. 
An Address delivered at the Opening of the Session, by James 
Cowie, M.R.C.V.S., Member of the Council, &c. &c. 
The veterinary art is of no slight importance, not only to the owners of 
live stocks, but to the public at large. This is sufficiently evident from the 
immense capital employed in our domestic animals. There are inftound 
numbers nine millions of cattle and thirty-four millions of sheep, which, 
added to the number of horses, represent a capital of more than two hundred 
millions sterling. It would be hazardous to reckon even the proximate 
amount of deaths among those arising from disease ; but the loss must be 
prodigious, if it amounts to nearly the sum of thirteen millions sterling, as 
reckoned by the late Prof. Youatt. 
In considering the history of the veterinary art in past ages, I shall have 
frequently to refer also to the medical art, in order the better to elucidate 
my subject, especially as in early times the one was more or less intermingled 
with the other. 
In ancient times there were no professed practitioners of the healing art. 
The Arabians and Egyptians, and some other of the more civilised eastern 
nations, exposed their sick and diseased in public pathways and market 
places, for the purpose of attracting the notice and sympathy of those pre- 
tending to have skill, and of receiving and applying their prescriptions. At 
that remote period the horse was not an animal of much service and utility. 
Shoeing was then unknown, and the horse’s hoofs being more tender and 
brittle than those of the camel and ass, the latter superseded his use, in almost 
all respects, except in time of war. Cavalry was no doubt employed in the 
earliest wars, as no animal in comparison to the horse could be so service- 
able in the field of battle, either for tractability or speed, and, w r e may add, 
courage. Rut even in this capacity, although there were then no made 
roads, the natural brittleness of the horse’s hoofs was a serious check to his 
value and efficiency. Hence we read in the Book of Judges, that, in the 
wars of the Israelites, about twelve hundred years before the Christian 
era, “the horses’ hoofs were broken by their prancing.” Under these 
circumstances we must come to a subsequent period, when the horse 
was of more note and utility, before we can expect to have much 
anxiety evinced in regard to his health. About six hundred years later, 
corresponding to the times of Jeremiah the prophet, we have the com- 
mencement of the Olympic games. The importance and magnitude of these 
games, and the excitement occasioned by them among the Grecians, 
may be judged of from the fact that several hundred horses started together 
to contest a race, — sometimes mounted by riders, and at other times yoked 
to chariots. 
About that time the medical art was beginning to be better understood, 
and the treatment of horses in disease, considering their growing import- 
ance, must have made considerable advances. At a later period the Romans 
prosecuted the same sort of sport to an equal if not greater extent ; for we 
learn that so great was the interest in, and so universal the desire to witness, 
the races, that there was an immense circle formed, round which were seats 
