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THE VETERINARIAN, MAY 1, 1845. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
PAINFUL as the subject is to us, we feel ourselves impelled, 
through the complaints continually reaching us from one quarter or 
another, by word of mouth as well as by letter, once more to re- 
vert to the depression our, in common with other professions, and 
we might add with trades as well, is at this moment — much to the 
discomfiture of many of its members, and in particular of some 
resident in the country — experiencing. One grand and general 
cause for this is the over-supply of veterinary practitioners. Like 
surgeons, we are unfortunately multiplying at a greater ratio than 
that in which our patients increase : and what renders our case 
even worse than that of the surgeons, is, that the number of our 
patients may be said — considering the aggregate number of horses 
in the country — rather to grow less than greater. Not, perhaps, 
that the total amount of horses in England or Great Britain is any 
smaller than hitherto, or that there exists less sickness or lameness 
among horses than formerly, but that, from various causes, fewer 
cases of sickness and lameness find their way into the infirmaries 
of veterinary surgeons. We have, on a prior occasion, mentioned 
some of these causes : there will, perhaps, as we are on the subject 
again, be no great harm done should we happen to repeat one or 
more of them here. 
Although the aggregate amount of horses in the country may be 
no less, there are, we have no hesitation to state, a less number of 
horses kept for the purposes of pleasure or pastime than there used 
to be in days gone by. Many a man who once kept a horse to 
ride himself, or to draw his family about, now-a-days does without 
a horse : he feels that hay and corn are expensive articles, that 
his tax for his horse amounts to £1..8s .9<Z. annually, and the tax 
for his man (for he must have a groom of some sort) is £1..4.?. ; and 
that, in addition to this, he has about £3 a-year to pay for shoeing. 
Consequently his account at the end of the year, for his horse, will 
stand somewhat as follows : — 
