206 THE PRIVILEGES OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
contend against. If a valuable horse or cow is taken ill, the pro- 
bability is that the owner does not send to the man who all his 
life has studied the habits of the animal — who is acquainted with 
the various forms of disease — who has marked every symptom — 
who can in a moment point out the exact nature of the malady — 
but he opens the most recent veterinary work, and endeavours to 
discover the complaint. He sends for nitre, digitalis, and emetic 
tartar — he bleeds — he physics — setons and blisters. Or, should he 
have recourse to no such publication, he proceeds to the chemist 
and druggist, in whose window appears the formidable announce- 
ment, “ Horse and Cattle Medicines carefully prepared from the 
last Edition of the Veterinary Pharmacopoeia:” or, adopting neither 
of these courses, he will send for his farrier or cowleech, — to the 
man who knows not the place of the lungs nor the locality of the 
stomach ; and when neither book nor chemist, farrier nor cow- 
leech, can effect a cure, will then take the advice of the educated 
veterinary surgeon. 
This is certainly an age in which measures are being taken to 
make every man his own “Horse and Cattle Doctor.” Plain 
works on veterinary subjects are written by veterinary surgeons. 
No sooner does an epidemic appear than a few veterinary sur- 
geons are consulted, their opinions printed and circulated through 
the land, and symptoms and remedies carefully laid down, so that 
he who runs may read. Insurance societies start up, founded on data 
afforded by veterinary surgeons, yet it is one of their instructions 
that the veterinary surgeon is not (unless he usually attends to the 
stock) to be called in except in cases of extreme urgency. It is 
from causes such as these that the profession has been brought 
into its present state of depression, from which I trust ere long it 
may be relieved. 
It has been expected by some that the Charter was to remove 
all these complaints — that we should obtain by its provisions 
what parliament alone can grant, and a degree of protection which 
the College of Surgeons does not enjoy. But allow me to ask how 
are many of the evils I have mentioned to be checked, much less 
removed, by legislative enactment I It is the duty of the legisla- 
ture to render efficient protection to those who, at great sacrifice of 
time and money, have devoted themselves to the study and prac- 
tice of veterinary medicine. This may be done by making it a 
misdemeanor for any one to practise as a veterinary surgeon with- 
out proper authority. Let the quack practise as a quack, for, after 
ali that can be said or done, it is the moral tone of a profession 
that carries the most, weight with the public — it is the estimation 
its members are held in, the capability they shew in the per- 
formance of their several duties, that guide and control the public 
