STATUS OF THE VETERINARY PROFESSION. 379 
states, that he could not help expressing his surprise at the 
attack I made on the Sporting Surgeon for asserting that which 
was true. I do not consider 1 did any thing so furious as make 
an attack; and lam positive I never denied the truth of the 
statement. I have a great aversion to anonymous communica- 
tions in a professional journal ; and more especially on the state 
of our profession ; because it gives the writer the advantage of 
saying behind the curtain what he would not presume to say 
before it; and I apprehend this is the position with regard to 
the subject in question, both of the Sporting Surgeon and the 
anonymous writer of the article at page 322 of your June No. 
I am of opinion the Sporting Surgeon was out of his course 
when he gave himself the trouble to set the veterinary surgeon 
to rights ; knowing, too, that if he would open his eyes to his 
own fraternity, he need not seek any other source for a supply 
of the particular article in which he was at that time dealing. 
But the complaint the latter made against some practitioners 
amongst us is comparatively harmless with the serious charges 
made by the anonymous veterinary surgeon, page 322. Allow 
me, Sir, to recapitulate them for the benefit of Brighton, Bath, 
Cheltenham, Leamington, cum multis aids : — “Veterinary 
surgeons must submit to the insolent familiarities of the grooms : 
they must also pay them poundage on all bills (!), and, if required, 
must not hesitate to unite with them in defrauding the masters 
by charging for new shoes in cases where removes only have been 
supplied (! !), and also for medicines which have never been re- 
quired, and possibly never been given (!!!), the groom either 
receiving all or an important part of the plunder” (! ! ! !). Really, 
Sir, this is information too important to be limited to the pages 
of The Veterinarian. It ought to figure in Bell's Life, the 
morning daily papers, and other sources of advertisement. 
Right glad should I be to see it, and join in the expense, not 
for the benefit of those veterinary surgeons who practise such 
infamous and disgraceful swindling, but for those who do not, 
and for the patrons of the profession. The custom of gratuities 
to servants is an old one in England, and will remain so ; but 
the purchase of patronage by a system of plunder, in trade or 
profession, ought to be put a stop to. The whole veterinary 
profession is bound, as in the performance of a moral duty in- 
cumbent upon it, to use every legal means in its power to put 
down a practice of plunder so disgraceful, dishonest, and destruc- 
tive to its interest as that declared to be true by the writer of 
the article, p. 322, of your Journal for June. There are other 
persons practising the veterinary profession in Brighton, Bath, 
Cheltenham, &c., besides the anonymous writer, who can 
add their testimony to the fact, if it be so, of what has been 
