INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
604 
cures were recorded on tablets of marble. These temple- 
registers soon became the means by which a number of 
medical facts were accumulated, and these being carefully 
arranged, led to the practice of medicine as a profession. 
We are further informed that Esculapius was a pupil of the 
Centaur Chiron, to whom he was indebted for a knowledge 
of herbs and medicinal plants. 
The Centaurs, I need hardly stop to tell you, were fabulous 
beings made up of half men and half horses. They inhabited 
Thessaly, which was an Egyptian colony, and were always 
at war with the Lapithae, to whom the invention of bits and 
bridles for horses is attributed. Probably this is an allusion to 
the checks they gave the Centaurs, who possibly were nothing 
more than marauders from the northern parts of Greece. 
The representation of these combats on the frieze of the 
Parthenon at Athens, must be familiar to most of you. 
A figure of Chiron has been chosen as the heraldic crest of 
the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. He has been 
supposed by Mr. Bracy Clarke to have been an Egyptian, or 
of Egyptian origin ; but the Greeks, rather than acknowledge 
any assistance they derived from their neighbours, referred it 
to their fanciful gods. I allude to him, because it is said that 
there are many veterinary recipes still extant handed down 
from him. Need I add that most of these consist of a 
jumbling together of heterogeneous substances, many of 
which we know nothing about at the present time ? Often, 
too, we find the same agents introduced under different 
names, while their number is almost legion. We cannot, 
consequently, hope to gain much from this source. 
Yet among these receipts we find one for the boasted 
Diapente of the farrier. It had a name, too, in that day, as 
it was ordered “ to be very carefully made, and kept ready for 
use.” I had almost expressed a wish that it was compounded 
now as directed by our progenitor Chiron ; namely, of equal 
parts gentian root, birthwort, myrrh, shavings of ivory and 
bay-berries ; for I fear the greater part of that sold consists 
of little more than the ground refuse of tinctures, and the 
sw eepings of the drug warehouse. 
As Greece declined, it is w r ell known that Rome advanced 
in power and w-ealth ; and among the Romans the veterinary 
art met with its admirers. By them, it w’ould seem to have 
been associated with rural affairs, if Ave may judge from the 
allusions made to it in their writings, as w r ell as by the poet 
Virgil. A most consistent and natural junction. 
On the downfall of the Roman Empire, the sciences, arts, 
and literature, shared in the general wreck. Then the fanatic 
