CASTRATION IN INDIA. 
247 
rity to communicate direct with the heads of the profession, 
constituting the medical board. By such means a knowledge of 
anatomy and physiology must be kept up, and medical phrase- 
ology continually practised, all of which, in the veterinary 
surgeon, more or less fall into desuetude as the result of his iso- 
lation ; and so it will continue until we have a common head. 
I have before written in your pages to the effect- that we 
have no £i senior veterinary surgeon” in India ; no one to 
superintend our practice ; no one who has the smallest con- 
trol over us as far as our profession is concerned. If, there- 
fore, the veterinary surgeon do but attend at his hospital with 
punctuality, his commanding officer considers him a most 
exemplary man ; and if he do but keep the number of books 
laid down in the regulations, the inspecting general is natu- 
rally of the same opinion. Where then is the stimulus to 
exertion? Where is the necessity for it? He draws his pay 
to the same amount whether he is an industrious slave or an 
idle dolt, and thus it will continue until the eyes of our 
honorable masters are opened to their own advantage. 
But this is not the subject on which I sat down to write to 
you about. I meant to give you a case of castration ter- 
minating in death, which Captain Hickey has been fortunate 
enough never to have had, except in a solitary instance. My 
old friend, Hurford, of the 12th Lancers, when here, was one 
day in conversation with the commander-in-chief, General 
Anson, who told him that at the Opoor depot, although they 
castrated about a thousand horses annually, they never lost 
one. To which statement Mr. Hurford immediately replied 
that he did not believe it ; and I confess I am of his opinion. 
Possibly no death actually took place while the animals were 
under the knife, but that deaths did occur, and that, too, as 
the results of the operatian — although they were ignorant of 
it, for there was then no professional man in the establish- 
ment — I cannot but believe; and, perhaps, had my case 
occurred there, it would not have been considered as death 
from castration. 
Since Mr. Hurford left India they have been particularly un- 
fortunate at the depot. Last year some sixty or seventy horses 
died of scirrhous cord and internal abscesses. They were 
consequently obliged for a time to discontinue operating, and 
the result is that many of this year’s remounts are entire ; 
about fifty of which have fallen into my hands. I may as well 
add that these losses at Opoor took place under the same 
management and man as were formerly so successful. Fortu- 
nate, indeed, was my friend, Mr. Thacker, that he was not 
appointed to this establishment until just after these disasters, 
