ON THE STATES OF THE VETERINARY PROFESSION. 369 
obligated, in the details of our practice, to confide much to these 
functionaries for the due application and administration of our 
agents , and more particularly so when our patients are situated 
at a distance ; and I feel bound to say, after a practice of some 
years, that in general I have found them carried out to my 
satisfaction ; and that, without the familiarity existing which a 
Sporting Surgeon would lead us to believe. Nevertheless, on 
the principle of treating every man with the respect and 
civility due to his station, we shall generally get a more faithful 
return, and obtain our objects better, by such a course of 
conduct. 
But could we not, upon equal grounds, charge the family 
surgeon with being placed on a similar footing, regarding fami- 
liarity and dependency with the head nurse, whose influence 
ever reigns paramount, at least over the juvenile part of the 
establishment, as to his wishes and practice being frustrated 
or fulfilled, and upon whom rests the responsibility of his 
compounds being duly administered or not? And beyond this, 
a Sporting Surgeon will find many Vets, holding as due a sense 
of propriety of conduct and station as himself. 
We must admit and acknowledge the remarks in your Leader, 
that we cannot, perhaps ought not, to assume such high ground 
as the practitioner of human medicine. We must be content to 
play the Cinderella part. Our art has only yet to boast of 
having been systematically and rationally practised for little 
more than half a century ; and, however much we may proudly 
now boast of our Coleman, a Sewell, our Percivalls, our Turners, 
a Spooner, a Morton, and many others, we must recollect that 
the Hunters, Homes, Blizards, Fordyces, and Babingtons, were 
many years in advance. 
If proof were wanting that we are gradually rising in the 
public esteem, instances are not singular where a Sporting Sur- 
geon would, upon reference to some of our corporate boroughs, 
find the veterinary surgeon sustaining the highest municipal 
honours; some of which, I understand, in that capacity had the 
honour of an invite to the great civic feast of 1850 ; and we 
have the authority of your late Number, that the father of the 
profession died a magistrate of one of our leading manufacturing 
towns ! 
With, perhaps, some degree of truism, has it been asserted 
that the veterinarian needs not that polished education which 
the human practitioner does; or, to express myself professionally, 
however valuable and interesting it may be to him as a science, 
it may not, practically speaking, be so absolutely necessary for 
him to pursue such minute anatomical and physiological re- 
search: yet, in another respect, I contend he has more to learn; 
VOL. XXIV. 3 E 
