EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
597 
pew but scientific knowledge steps boldly forth, carrying 
along with her the lamp which will light her in the way of 
her inquiry.” It is the duty of practical men to apply the 
lights that shine on their professions. — E. J. Lance s Farmers 
Herald , September, 1853. 
THE VETERINARIAN, OCTOBER 1, 1853. 
7 ✓ 
Ne quid falsi dicere auaeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — C icero. 
Some time ago, it was inquired of us by a veterinary 
surgeon of the Hon. East India Company’s service, how it 
was that the Indian army, a larger one than the British, and 
possessing a greater number of veterinary officers, was without 
a principal veterinary surgeon ; the same as exists in 
our own, in the French, and in other continental armies? 
We had not before, we must confess, ever turned the subject 
over in our mind, though the moment we came to do so, the 
fact itself was palpable enough, while the defect struck us, 
as one calling for attention ; there being upwards of forty 
veterinary officers in their service, while in our own there 
exist hardly thirty. Whether, however, there be thirty or 
forty, and though veterinary surgeons be standing in both 
services in a state of isolation, as it were, in different regiments 
and stations, still do they seem to require, for the more 
efficient performance of the duties demanded of them, to be, 
as a professional body, linked together by some one common 
chain of concatenation, and for some person to hold the ends 
of this chain, and arrange its various links in such manner 
as to see that every individual one plays its due part; and 
this person ought to be one erected into superiority out of its 
own body. The functions of a principal veterinary surgeon 
properly carried out, are no less onerous and responsible on 
the part of the holder of the office, than they are appellant on 
the part of the subaltern officers of the department for their 
due co-operation and support. Not merely are “returns” 
required, periodically, of the number and nature of diseased 
and lame horses, the casualties, the results of treatment, the 
receipt and consumption of medicine, &c., but detailed 
accounts of particular cases and occurrences are called for 
requiring to be analysed and examined, and arranged into 
some scientific digest to be laid before the authorities, as 
tending, not only to the benefit of the military veterinary 
department itself, but as proving eventually of essential 
service to the professional community at large, and from them 
