958 
VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
ever, be bled, but may be cupped. In April it is good to bleed the middle 
vein, to cleanse the lungs, and to eat fresh meat, and to be cupped. In May 
we ought to eat hot things, and drink hot things, and bleed the liver vein, 
which is then full of venom, and avoid eating the fat or head of any beast, 
for such is injurious to health. In June abstain from excess, for the 
humours now rise to the brain. In September it is proper to eat the flesh 
of geese and pigs because of their viscosity, and take botany as medicine. It 
is good to draw a little blood both at the beginning and end of this month.” 
Bleeding in spring and autumn, and physicking at periodical times, were 
then considered essential. Hence the same practice among some farriers, 
even in our day, is followed towards their patients, with the approval, gene- 
rally, of the sager portion of farmers, who believe in their skill. At one 
time it was fashionable for women, old and young, to study and practise the 
profession, and we are about now, it would’ seem, to recur to that good old 
institution ! At a subsequent period the mantle of Esculapius fell on the 
studious race of barbers , who continued their twin avocations until the re- 
vival of learning. The art of medicine, however, seems to have enjoyed little 
popularity for long after that period, and poor veterinarians did not get their 
heads raised at all. The following extracts will show in what estimation 
medical men were then held : — Burton, in his ‘ Anatomie de Melancholie,’ 
observes, “ there was no use of physic among us, and but little at this day, 
except it be for a few nice idle citizens, surfeiting courtiers, and stall-fed 
gentlemen lubbers. The country people use kitchen physic, and see more in 
it.” In the reign of Henry VI, about 1450, in a letter to her husband, 
Margaret Paston says, “Bor Goddy’s sake beware what medicine ye take 
of any physician of London. I shall never trust to them because of your 
fadyr and mine outryl !” A consultation, so much prized by us in cases ol 
danger, does not seem to have much increased the patient’s confidence in 
these days. Hence the poet says : 
“ Like a prompt sculler one physician plies. 
And all his force and all his physic tries ; 
But two physicians, like a pair of oars, 
Conduct you soonest to the Stygian shores.” 
These and such like criticisms were, no doubt, galling to the profession, 
who, doubtless, believing in their own qualifications and intrinsic value, must 
have viewed them very unjust and unmerited. Their conscious superiority 
was well represented in the person of a Blorence doctor named Simon de 
Yilla, who, in announcing his advent, says, “ I have enough of sense and 
learning to furnish a whole city, and yet leave sufficient for myself.” 
The primitive college of physicians received its charter from Henry VIII, 
which laid the foundation of medicine as a science, and roused a spirit of in- 
quiry among a new class of persons regarding horse medicine. A few of 
these tried their skill at authorship, but none of them seem to have enjoyed 
any celebrity until one Gervase Markham, Gentleman, wrote his * Master- 
piece.” He seems to have been a voluminous writer, and an extensive 
practitioner. He flourished about the end of the sixteenth century and begin- 
ning of the seventeenth ; and he seems to have eclipsed all his contemporaries. 
His Maisterpiece , as he calls it, went through several editions. I shall 
make a few extracts from it for the purpose of showing the amount of know- 
ledge then possessed by the veterinarians. Authors are generally very 
modest, or wish to appear so, in their prefaces ; but Markham seems to have 
been fully sensible of his overwhelming superiority, and to proclaim it at 
once without a morsel of delicacy. He assures his readers that all knowledge 
of the horse and his diseases is contained in his book ; and, farther, that “ it 
contains me amply and fully adorned with the best of mine own feathers 
