VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
961 
After the discovery by William Harvey, physician to Charles I, of the 
circulation of the blood, about 1630, human anatomy and diseases came to 
be better understood, and gradual advances were made in the science. 
Boerhaave flourished in the end of that century, and contributed much 
towards a better understanding of medicine, and in giving an eclat by the 
splendour of his talents to the science over Europe. 
During this time the veterinary art remained almost statu quo , and our 
old friend, Gervase Markham, Gent., was still the standing authority. The 
only person who attempted any improvement at all on him was Snape, who 
was farrier and veterinary surgeon to Charles I after 1610. He was contem- 
porary, and must have come in contact with Harvey, both being engaged in 
the kiug’s service, and he would have the benefit of his conversation. 
Gibson, who wrote in the beginning of last century, was perhaps the 
first who discarded many of the absurdities and false doctrines which had, 
among veterinarians especially, been the growth of two and twenty centuries. 
In describing the nature and causes of diseases, he and his immediate pre- 
decessors seem, however, to have gone somewhat out of their latitude. In 
speaking of the cause of catarrh, or common cold, Gibson says — “ Some- 
times many of the symptoms will happen when the air is too much rarified 
and thin, for by that means the pressure is not sufficient to force the blood 
through the small vessels of the lungs, but will occasion a stagnation there, 
and cause a difficulty in breathing, which will be accompanied with a cough.” 
Another, disdaining to conceal his discovery regarding cataract , which we 
now-a-days consider to be simply an inflammation and subsequent opacity 
of the crystalline lens, gives us the definition of it. “ When a horse starts 
much, or seems frightened at everything he meets, his eyes are bad, arising 
from congealed bits of mots floating in the aqueous humour, and these 
when they become adherent, or sticky to one another, form cataract.” 
These are examples of the errors into which such men, at such a time, 
and stepping as they did into an untrodden path, were likely to fall. At 
the same time justice must be done them, in admitting their skill and judg- 
ment on many points of practice ; and they certainly laid a foundation which 
was followed up and improved on, as light broke out, and opportunity was 
afforded, by their successors. 
We must likewise remember that at that period medical men of good 
standing retained many of the errors and absurdities of a period long gone 
by. Eor example, a student and disciple of Boerhaave, and a man of con- 
siderable repute, writes thus in 1710 — “It is an undeniable fact that the 
planets have an exceeding wonderful effect on the fluids of the body.” And 
again, the same M.D., in speaking on the subject of bleeding, says — “ It is 
necessary, where the blood is too much agitated and in motion, or where it 
is thick and sizy ; and bleeding, moreover, renders the body cool and light- 
some.” 
Even long after that period such doctrines as the following were taught 
in the medical schools : — “ The use of the bile is designed by nature to 
blunt or sheath the acids of the chyle, because they, being entangled with 
its sulphurs, thicken it so that it cannot be sufficiently diluted by the juices 
from the sweetbread to enter the lacteal or milky vessels.” And even so 
late as 1770 Dr. Tercival informs us that “physicians prescribed the teeth 
of bears, the jaw-bones of pikes, and the black lips of crabs’ claws, in 
jaundice.” 
The art of pharmacy must have been rather a complex affair in these 
days. Chemistry was then in its extreme infancy, and without knowing the 
peculiar property of the drugs which they prescribed, medical practitioners 
jumbled a number of ingredients into one dose, the one portion very likely 
neutralising the other. The wretched farragoes of the olden time — 
