960 
VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
or, the Art of Horse Hearing and Management.’ In this work he attains 
the summit of human knowledge, or, to use his own words in the dedication, 
“ A new and eternal .foundation is laid, which will continue until all the 
corners of the world is consumed.” As this work is both scarce and curious, 
I may be excused for giving one or two short extracts from it, to use the 
author’s expression, “this book of genus and superfluity of wisdom.” After 
describing the care requisite to a mare during her confinement, he says, 
“ Now for the sucking of foals. Although one man writes that all authors 
do agree that foals should suck for two years at least ; nay, that, after the 
Spanish fashion, they should suck until they cover their dames, I, for my 
part, and, as I think, all good breeders are of a contrary opinion, for, how- 
ever, in the days of Pliny and Aristotle, two years might be thought little 
enough, yet in these our days we find it full one year too much. As soon 
therefore as your foals have sucked a year, or till your mares be ready to foal 
again, you shall then, some three or four days before the full moon, about 
nine or ten of the clock of the forenoon, take all your foals from your 
mares.” 
In these days they had a very summary method of treating horses that 
had the unseemly practice of protruding their tongues while in saddle or 
harness. Salamone de la Browe — who is described as “a man of exquisite 
practice and knowledge” — and others, recommended that when a horse 
“doeth in his rydjng thrust forth his tongue, and will not by any means bee 
made to keepe it in his mouthe, to take a pair of nippers and seize and 
houlde faste the tongue that he cannot stir it, and with a sharp razor cut so 
much of his tongue away as he puts out of his mouthe.” Gervase Markham, 
for the inconvenience of the thing, “can,” as he says, “give no allowance 
to this sort of dismemberment,” but recommends the rider “ to carry a good 
club with him, and when the horse thrusts out his tongue to knock it in 
with the great end of said rodde, or, if that wont do, muzzle him.” 
The practitioners in Markham’s time, and long after, were utterly ignorant 
of anatomy and pathology, and of course physiology was quite beyond their 
comprehension. They talked of the function of the gall bladder where 
there is not one to be found ; and they knew nothing of the function of any 
of the internal organs which they could see and handle. Their nomencla- 
ture of internal diseases consisted erf such terms as “gross humours,” “in- 
ward grief,” “molten grease,” “ foundering of the body,” &c. They talked 
of symptoms of diseases of which horses in our day would seem to be 
exempted. “Our very mortal distemper,” they called “anticor,” the sign 
whereof is a swelling at the bottom of the breast, rising upward to the 
neck, the cause whereof is from the great abundance of blood which is bred 
by too curious and proud keeping. In treating diseases they occasionally 
bled, but always very slightly. Aloes and other purgatives were unknown 
to them. Wine, oil, urine, the staler the better, cinnamon, brimstone, &c., 
were their favourite medicines. It would thus appear that nature had, in 
almost every case, not only to contend against disease in bringing the 
patient to convalescence, but generally the treatment too. 
The ignorance of the veterinarian, however, cannot be wondered at, con- 
sidering the low state of medicine generally. Thus Pemel, a surgeon in 
Kent, writes a large treatise, about this time, which contains much absurdity 
throughout. While our modern surgeons find cancer a most perplexing 
complaint, Pemel had no difficulty in eradicating it, by the application of 
the juice of calandine and goose dung ! He recommended watercresses for 
cleansing the blood and dispelling gross humours, and as being very useful 
in green sickness, and profitable in stoppings of the liver and spleen. 
Violets and thyme were specifics for almost every disease; but it is useless 
to multiply examples. 
